Using Import-CSV in Powershell, ignoring commented lines

powershell

Solution

CSV has no notion of "comments" - it's just flat data. You'll need to use `Get-Content` and inspect each line. If a line starts with `#`, ignore it, otherwise process it.

If you're OK with using a temp file:

Get-content special.csv |where-object{!$_.StartsWith("#")}|add-content -path $(join-path -path $env:temp -childpath "special-filtered.csv");
$mydata = import-csv -path $(join-path -path $env:temp -childpath "special-filtered.csv");
remove-item -path $(join-path -path $env:temp -childpath "special-filtered.csv")
$mydata |format-table -autosize; #Just for illustration

Edit: Forgot about `convertfrom-csv`. It gets much simpler this way.

$mydata = Get-Content special.csv |
    Where-Object { !$_.StartsWith("#") } |
    ConvertFrom-Csv

Problem

I think that I must be missing something obvious because I'm trying to use Import-CSV to import CSV files that have commented out lines (always beginning with a # as the first character) at the top of the file, so the file looks like this: ``` #[SpecialCSV],,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, #Version,1.0.0,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, #,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, #,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, #[Table],,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, Header1,Header2,Header3,Header4,Header5,Header6,Header7,... Data1,Data2,Data3,Data4,Data5,Data6,Data7,... ``` I'd like to ignore those first 5 lines, but still use Import-csv to get the rest of the information nicely in to Powershell. Thanks

Original source