Loading a PowerShell hashtable from a file?

Question

I\'ve got a file containing some data in PowerShell Object Notation:

@{ X = \'x\'; Y = \'y\' }

I\'d like to load this into a variable from

Answer 1

I ran into trouble using ConvertFrom-StringData as @Chad suggested. If you do:

$hash = get-content .\test.txt | ConvertFrom-StringData

I found I had an object array rather than a hash table. In fact, it appears that I had an array of hash tables, each with one entry. I confirmed with a:

$hash.GetType()

It looks like you need to join each line of the slurped input file to ensure that it forms a single string for ConvertFrom..'s use:

$hash = ((get-content .\test.txt) -join '`n') | ConvertFrom-StringData