Quickest way to organize categorized data in a text file and convert to CSV

Question

I have a text file with hundreds of rows. Data fields and values separated by a colon and one empty line separating each data set. It looks something like this...

ico         


        

Answer 1

regex is the way to go:

$data = @'
icon:rain
temperatureHigh:55.37
temperatureLow:42.55
humidity:0.97
windSpeed:6.7
precipType:rain
precipProbability:0.97

icon:partly-cloudy-day
temperatureHigh:34.75
temperatureLow:27.1
humidity:0.8
windSpeed:15.32
precipType:snow
precipProbability:0.29

icon:clear-day
temperatureHigh:47
temperatureLow:31.72
humidity:0.64
windSpeed:9.27
precipType:rain
precipProbability:0.01

'@

$head = $data
$head = $head -replace '([^\s]+):([^\s]+)', '"$1",'
$head = $head -replace '\n\n', '::'
$head = $head -replace '\n', ''
$head = $head -replace '(.*?)::.*', '$1'
$head = $head -replace ',\s*$', ''
$head

$rows = $data
$rows = $rows -replace '([^\s]+):([^\s]+)', '"$2",'
$rows = $rows -replace '\n\n', '::'
$rows = $rows -replace '\n', ''
$rows = $rows + "::"
$rows = $rows -replace '::', "`n"
$rows = $rows -replace ',\s*\n', "`n"
$rows

Output:

"icon","temperatureHigh","temperatureLow","humidity","windSpeed","precipType","precipProbability"
"rain","55.37","42.55","0.97","6.7","rain","0.97"
"partly-cloudy-day","34.75","27.1","0.8","15.32","snow","0.29"
"clear-day","47","31.72","0.64","9.27","rain","0.01"