Powershell to open, edit, save a tab delimited file?

Question

I'm trying to find a way to automate a process from beginning to end.

The details of the process, which I'm doing manually, are as follows:

I have a tab delimited file (.tab file extension). The files have a variable number of rows. I'm using excel to open the files and multiply some of the columns by -1 to negate their values. After negating the values, I save the file.

I'm looking for a way to automate this process, and though that powershell might be capable of doing so, but my searches haven't yielded much useful information.

How is this question different from your [previous one](http://stackoverflow.com/q/39980639/1630171)? — Ansgar Wiechers, Oct 12 '16 at 14:36
I didn't do a great job of explaining my desired outcome in the previous one. — UnladenSwallow, Oct 12 '16 at 14:59
Then you should fix that by editing the existing question instead of re-posting what is basically the same question. — Ansgar Wiechers, Oct 12 '16 at 15:00

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 12 '16 at 15:19

The components you need are:

Read the file into an array of strings
```
$content = Get-Content 'file.tab'
```
Loop over all strings in $content and split each by the tabulator -- the result is another array. Loop over that new array and multiply each entry by -1. Join the so multiplied array to get back the whole row.After you're finished with all strings, assign the complete result to the original array $content again.
```
$content = $content | ForEach{($_.split("`t") | ForEach{-$_}) -join "`t"}
```
Output the result as you want. e.g. by using the Out-File cmdlet,
```
$content | Out-File 'new_file.tab'
```

EDIT: I did not read the other question which was marked as the original to this duplicate.

Thank you for the guidance on this david, much appreciated. – UnladenSwallow Oct 12 '16 at 15:33 — UnladenSwallow, Oct 12 '16 at 15:33

Powershell to open, edit, save a tab delimited file?

1 Answers1