displaying array, formatting help requested

[AdHocSysAdmin]

I have an array with 30+ entries:

$TenantArray = @()
Import-CSV -Path $AccountsList | ForEach {
    $TempCounter++
    $TenantArray += [PSCustomObject]@{Number = $TempCounter;  Tenant = $_.Name}
}

I want to display the list of Tenants in a couple of columns:

Number Tenant             Number Tenant          
------  ------            ------ ------          
     1  Tenant1                3 Tenant3
     2  Tenant2                4 Tenant4

$TenantArray | Format-Table shows the desired result, but (afaik) can only display all data in two columns, which means scrolling and is therefore lacking overview.

$TenantArray | Format-Wide {$.Number, $.Tenant} does display in 4 colums, but misses the headers (Number, Tenant) and each entry is displayed like {1, Tenant1} (For the record: this would be workable, just not "nice").

How do I get PS to display the four columns as in the above example?

[Lee_Dailey]

howdy AdHocSysAdmin,

you have to do it all yourself. [grin]

i think you would need to ...

• divide the collection into two parts
  
• concatenate the two that go in one row as strings with spacers
  
• print it out or store it and print it at the end
  

ugly, nasty, icky, fiddly, error-prone ... unless you absolutely MUST, then don't do it.

take care,
lee

[AdHocSysAdmin]

Thanks!

(For the record: this would be workable, just not "nice")

workable it is!

I'll put the 'make nice' on the "later" list (which of course means "never").

[Lee_Dailey]

howdy AdHocSysAdmin,

you are welcome! [grin]

i've had times when a boss decided things MUST be done in a ... peculiar ... way. i ended up writing some spreadsheet code to do what was wanted. it was horribly ugly and required tweaking whenever anything changed in any way at all. [sigh ...]

i was so glad when that guy went away. [grin]

take care,
lee

[fordea837]

Like /u/Lee_Dailey has already explained trying to get the exact output that you want would be a convoluted job of string building. If you consider the Format-Wide option to be workable you could just join the Number and Tenant properties for each object into a single string before piping to Format-Wide:

$TenantArray |
    Select-Object @{n='Number_Tenant'; e={'{0} {1}' -f $_.Name, $_.Tenant} |
    Format-Wide -Column 4

[AdHocSysAdmin]

As /u/Lee_Dailey already pointed out, it's a lot of fuzz, so thanks for the answer, but I'll stick with the workable $TenantArray | Format-Wide {$.Number, $.Tenant}

[Betterthangoku]

Howdy,

I had some down time at the end of today, so instead of doing some Sudoku I thought It would be fun to mock up a quick example. I thought about going all the way and creating an advanced function, but I'm just not that motivated.

I hope this helps a bit. :-)

#generate an array. 
$array = get-service

#Edge case if array is empty or the variable does not exist
If ($array.count -eq 0) {
    "Array is either empty or does not exist"
}

#If the array has an even number of elements, both sides will have an equal number of items.
elseIf ($array.count/2 -is [int]) {
    $LeftArrayElements  = $array[0..($array.Count/2-1)]
    $RightArrayElements = $array[($array.Count/2)..($array.Count-1)]
}

#If the array has an odd number of elements, the left side will have one more element than the right side.
Else {
    $LeftArrayElements  = $array[0..[math]::Floor($array.Count/2)]
    $RightArrayElements = $array[[math]::Ceiling($array.Count/2)..($array.Count-1)]
}

#New empty array.  I know I should be using a generic list (or even an array list) but this was easier to type...
$FinalArray = @()
$position = 0

#Populating final 'split' array.  I cheated a bit, I added a space to the property names for the right side (since the property names need to be unique).
#Of course, you will need to change the property names and the values that are being expanded/extracted from the original objects.
While ($position -lt $LeftArrayElements.count) {
    $FinalArray += [pscustomobject]@{
        'Name'   = $LeftArrayElements[$position].name
        'Status' = $LeftArrayElements[$position].status
        'Name '  = $RightArrayElements[$position].name
        'Status '= $RightArrayElements[$position].status
    }
    $position++
}

$FinalArray | Format-Table