Powershell import-csv with empty headers

Question

I'm using PowerShell To import a TAB separated file with headers. The generated file has a few empty strings "" on the end of first line of headers. PowerShell fails with an error:

"Cannot process argument because the value of argument "name" is invalid. Change the value of the "name" argument and run the operation again"

because the header's require a name.

I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas on how to manipulate the file to either remove the double quotes or enumerate them with a "1" "2" "3" ... "10" etc.

Ideally I would like to not modify my original file. I was thinking something like this

$fileContents = Get-Content -Path = $tsvFileName
$firstLine = $fileContents[0].ToString().Replace('`t""',"")
$fileContents[0] = $firstLine
Import-Csv $fileContents -Delimiter "`t"

But Import-Csv is expecting $fileContents to be a path. Can I get it to use Content as a source?

Answer 1

If you want to work with strings instead use ConvertFrom-Csv e.g.:

PS> 'FName,LName','John,Doe','Jane,Doe' | ConvertFrom-Csv | Format-Table -Auto

FName LName
----- -----
John  Doe
Jane  Doe

Answer 2

You can either provide your own headers and ignore the first line of the csv, or you can use convertfrom-csv on the end like Keith says.

ps> import-csv -Header a,b,c,d,e foo.csv

Now the invalid headers in the file is just a row that you can skip.

-Oisin

Answer 3

I ended up needing to handle multiple instances of this issue. Rather than use the -Header and manually setting up each import instance I wrote a more generic method to apply to all of them. I cull out all of the `t"" instances of the first line and save the file to open as a $filename + _bak and import that one.

$fileContents = Get-Content -Path $tsvFileName

if( ([string]$fileContents[0]).ToString().Contains('""') )
{
  [string]$fixedFirstLine = $fileContents[0].ToString().Replace('`t""',"")
  $fileContents[0] = $fixedFirstLine
  $tsvFileName = [string]::Format("{0}_bak",$tsvFileName

  $fileContents | Out-File -FilePath $tsvFileName

}

Import-Csv $tsvFileName -Delimiter "`t"