I want to remove the quotation marks for only the first column of my csv file with powershell

So instead of:

"Username","Identifier"
"booker12","9012"   
"grey07","2070"

I want the result to be:

Username,"Identifier"
booker12,"9012" 
grey07,"2070

To remove all quotation marks the code would be

Import-Csv "test.csv" | ConvertTo-CSV -NoTypeInformation | % { $_ -Replace '"', ""} | Out-File C:\CSV_Tests\test.csv -fo -en ascii

But how to remove the marks just for the first column?

Thanks!

CodePudding user response：

As commented, it is recommended to install the latest PowerShell version which has an new ConvertTo-Csv/Export-Csv cmdlets with a -quotefields.
But as that appears not to be possible for your environment:

$Csv = @'
"Username","Identifier"
"booker12","9012"   
"grey07","2070"
'@ -Split '\r?\n'

$Csv -Replace '^"([^"]*)"', '$1'
Username,"Identifier"
booker12,"9012"
grey07,"2070"

Explanation:

1. The first ^ marks the beginning of a line
2. ([^"]*) selects all successive characters that aren't double quotes
3. '$1' is the placeholder the results of the sequence defined in 2.

For your file this means:

(Get-Content .\Test.csv) -Replace '^"([^"]*)"', '$1' |Set-Content .\Test.csv

• Note that the parenthesis around (Get-Content .\Test.csv) are not recommended but required if you write back to the same file.