Import-Csv from string instead from a file?

Question

Is there a way to create a csv object in powershell from variable that contains string? At the moment I need to write content in a temp file and then import it to csv and I want to reduce disk operations:

$some_string | Set-Content $temp_file
$csv_content=Import-Csv $temp_file

EDIT

@Graham Gold , Јοеу thanks for the answers (I've set +1 on both of you) , but seems the Joey's answer is correct.Here's my test:

    $csv_string="
`"col1`" ; `"col2`"
val11 ; val12
val21 ; val22"

$csv_content1 = $csv_string | ConvertFrom-CSV 
$csv_content2 = $csv_string | ConvertTo-CSV 
"
ConvertFrom result:"
$csv_content1
"
ConvertTo result:"
$csv_content2

And the result:

ConvertFrom result:

H1                                                                             
--                                                                             
col1 ; "col2"                                                                  
val11 ; val12                                                                  
val21 ; val22                                                                  

ConvertTo result:
#TYPE System.String
"Length"
"47"

For a more complete and flexible solution, lease see this answer, taking a list and doing some additional magic. — not2qubit
– not2qubit, Commented Dec 11, 2022 at 6:23

Joey · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-05 10:37:46Z

37

You can use ConvertFrom-Csv instead:

$csv_content = $some_string | ConvertFrom-Csv -Delim ';'

Import-Csv is little more than a wrapper around Get-Content and ConvertFrom-Csv.

edited Jul 5, 2013 at 10:37

answered Jul 5, 2013 at 9:40

Joey

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Comments

wtgreen · Accepted Answer · 2014-01-02 20:30:05Z

6

Even better:

$csv_content1 = ConvertFrom-CSV -delim ';' -Input @"
"col1"; "col2"
val11 ; val12
val21 ; val22
"@

answered Jan 2, 2014 at 20:30

wtgreen

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3 Comments

Jonas Over a year ago

This question has already been answered and accepted. Could you clarify why your answer is even better than one that got accepted?

wtgreen Over a year ago

Actually, on reading the question again I should have provided a slightly different solution: $csv_content1 = ConvertFrom-CSV -delim ';' -Input $some_string The advantage is that it doesn't need to put the string on the pipeline. However for the example text given when a developer want's the text embedded within the program itself, using the example with the @here string is better in that it doesn't require saving the text into a string variable first, and again create a pipeline unnecessarily.

Jonas Over a year ago

Could you please edit your answer and add this explanation, so people that find this question in the future understand why your answer could be better? Specially when answering old questions, it is usually better to provide as many details as possible. The website works better if we help by giving information enough for people to understand how things work in our answers. Thanks.

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