How to merge colums of multiple text files into one csv file using PowerShell?

Question

I have got multiple measurement files with one column of numeric data each. (Update: The script should work for variable numbers of measurement files.)

Answer 1

You could try something like this:

$file1 = "C:\firstTxtFile.txt"
$file2 = "C:\SecondTxtFile.txt"
$outputFile = "C:\Output.txt"

$file1String = Get-content $file1 
$file2String = Get-content $file2

'"data1.dat","data2.dat"' > $outputFile

$counter = 0
while(($file1String[$counter] -ne $null) -and ($file2String[$counter] -ne $null)){
    $Line = $file1String[$counter] + "," + $file2String[$counter]
    $line >> $outputFile
    $counter++
}

This will take two text file and combine them into one output file.

Note: The output file will be overwritten each time this is run.

Answer 2

Here's one way:

$files = Get-ChildItem D:\temp *.dat
$header = $files|foreach {$_.basename}
$content= $files | foreach { ,(gc $_.fullname) }

$lines = for($i=0; $i -lt $content[0].Count; $i++)
{
    $line = for($x=0; $x -lt $files.count; $x++)
    {
        $content[$x][$i]        
    }

    $line -join ','
}

$lines | ConvertFrom-Csv -Header $header | Export-Csv data.csv