Vista - Sort text file

I have a comma delimited text file with 58 columns. I am using this
script to sort the file on the first column.
Import-csv c:\temp\largeFile.txt|sort-object Col1 | out-file c:\temp
\sorted_LargeFile.txt

The output file is sorted, but it's a list rather than a table. How to
make the script output the file while retaining the tabular structure?
Example-
Original file-
Col1, col2, col3......................Col58
John, SSN, M........................some value
Alice, SSN, F........................some value

Outputted Sorted file (Notice that the sorting on the name col worked)
Col1: Alice
Col2: SSN
Col3: F
.....
Col58: some value

Col1: John
Col2: SSN
Col3: M
.....
Col58: some value

Thank you

Use export-csv rather than out-file

Ken wrote:

Thank you, that sorted out the formatting problem. I am sorting a file
100Mb in size and script consume 3.5GB of memory, runs for over 10
minutes. I am running this on a quad core 2 proc server. The same sort
operation on a Linix box takes un-noticable resources and less than 30
seconds to complete. Is the Powershell sort algorithm implementation
just inferior to the Unix counterpart?
import-csv <file>|sort-object -property <col name>| Export-csv <path
of sorted_file>

That's just a natural consequence of the overhead involved with creating a
bunch of custom powershell objects. Powershell offers a pretty rich
environment but one of the current downsides is you pay dearly in performance.

I've run into similar issues where the simple and obvious powershell way
just did not scale up well.

A faster way might be to use [System.IO.File]::ReadAllLines() to get a
string array and then use the sort method on that array. Since you're sorting
from the first column I *think* the sort should produce the same results.



"Ken" wrote:

See if this works. Assumes $inputfile contains a fileinfo object for your
source file.

$array = [System.IO.File]::ReadAllLines($inputfile.fullname)
$array[0] | Set-content "outfile.txt" #save off header
$array = $array[1..$array.length] #trim off header
[System.Array]::Sort($array)
add-Content "outfile.txt" $array




"PaulChavez" wrote: