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How can I split a block of text into multiline records based on the starting line?

October 25, 2023

How can I split this into separate strings/arrays/etc so that I can then iterate on each one separately? The goal is to separate them so that I can then parse each record and insert into a PSCustomObject.

I have the following block of text representing more than 1 scan. Each scan record begins with ‘Root Scan Path’ line and ends with ‘Suspicious Files’ line.

The closest I have been able to get is the following line, which works but then I lose the ‘Root Scan Path’ line because it’s the delimiter.

$String -Split "Root Scan Path: C:\\"

There could be more than 2 scan records as well.

Root Scan Path: C:\
Scan ID: 03307ad8-1a59-7d4e-8dfe-28864c9d1bc2
Status: Completed
Initiated from: User
Start Time: Monday, October 23, 2023 9:24:18 PM
End Time: Monday, October 23, 2023 9:34:00 PM
Scanned Files: 38311
Unsupported Files: 229479
Traversed Files: 321202
Total Files: 267790
Suspicious Files: 0
Root Scan Path: C:\
Scan ID: f32a64b0-56f5-664c-bf37-a7b120f759d8
Status: Running
Initiated from: User
Start Time: Tuesday, October 24, 2023 6:20:45 PM
End Time:
Scanned Files: 0
Unsupported Files: 0
Traversed Files: 0
Total Files: 0
Suspicious Files: 0

>Solution :

Assuming there are no empty rows between each block, the following might work:

$out = [ordered]@{}
$theInputString -split '\r?\n(?=Root Scan Path:)' | ForEach-Object {
    foreach ($line in $_ -split '\r?\n') {
        $key, $value = $line.Split(':', 2).Trim()
        $out[$key] = $value
    }
    [pscustomobject] $out
    $out.Clear()
}

I would recommend Olaf’s using ConvertFrom-StringData for its simplicity, however the cmdlet has a caveat that it doesn’t preserve the order of the properties (because hashtables don’t ensure its keys order), also another caveat I have noticed is that it consumes the backslash \ from the string (unsure if this is documented):

'Root Scan Path=C:\' | ConvertFrom-StringData

Name                           Value
----                           -----
Root Scan Path                 C: