ConvertTo-Csv Output without quotes

Question

I am using ConvertTo-Csv to get comma separated output

 get-process | convertto-csv -NoTypeInformation -Delimiter \",\"

It out

Answer 1

Here is a way to remove the quotes

get-process | convertto-csv -NoTypeInformation -Delimiter "," | % {$_ -replace '"',''} 

But it has a serious drawback if one of the item contains a " it will be removed !

Answer 2

A slightly modified variant of JPBlanc's answer:

I had an existing csv file which looked like this:

001,002,003
004,005,006

I wanted to export only the first and third column to a new csv file. And for sure I didn't want any quotes ;-) It can be done like this:

Import-Csv -Path .\source.csv -Delimiter ',' -Header A,B,C | select A,C | ConvertTo-Csv -NoTypeInformation -Delimiter ',' | % {$_ -replace '"',''} | Out-File -Encoding utf8 .\target.csv

Answer 3

Once the file is generated, you can run

set-content FILENAME.csv ((get-content FILENAME.csv) -replace '"')

Answer 4

Depending on how pathological (or "full-featured") your CSV data is, one of the posted solutions will already work.

The solution posted by Kory Gill is almost perfect - the only issue remaining is that quotes are removed also for cells containing the line separator \r\n, which is causing issues in many tools.

The solution is adding a newline to the character class expression:

$fixedData = $quotedData | % {$_ -replace  `
'\G(?<start>^|,)(("(?<output>[^,"\n]*?)"(?=,|$))|(?<output>".*?(?<!")("")*?"(?=,|$)))' `
,'${start}${output}'}

Answer 5

This function takes a powershell csv object from the pipeline and outputs like convertto-csv but without adding quotes (unless needed).

function convertto-unquotedcsv {
    param([Parameter(ValueFromPipeline=$true)]$csv, $delimiter=',', [switch]$noheader=$false)
    begin {
      $NeedQuotesRex = "($([regex]::escape($delimiter))|[\n\r\t])"
      if ($noheader) { $names = @($true) } else { $names = @($false) }
    } 
    process {
      $psop = $_.psobject.properties
      if (-not $names) {
        $names = $psop.name | % {if ($_ -match $NeedQuotesRex) {'"' + $_ + '"'} else {$_}}
        $names -join $delimiter   # unquoted csv header
      }
      $values = $psop.value | % {if ($_ -match $NeedQuotesRex) {'"' + $_ + '"'} else {$_}}
      $values -join $delimiter    # unquoted csv line
    } 
    end {
    }
}

$names gets an array of noteproperty names and $values gets an array of notepropery values. It took that special step to output the header. The process block gets the csv object one piece at a time.

Here is a test run

$delimiter = ','; $csvData = @"
id,string,notes,"points per 1,000",number
4,"a delimiter$delimiter is in here,","test data 3",1,348
5,"a comma, is in here,","test data 4`r`nwith a newline",0.5,347
6,hello world2.,classic,"3,000",123
"@

$csvdata | convertfrom-csv | sort number | convertto-unquotedcsv -delimiter $delimiter

id,string,notes,"points per 1,000",number
6,hello world2.,classic,"3,000",123
5,"a comma, is in here,","test data 4
with a newline",0.5,347
4,"a delimiter, is in here,",test data 3,1,348

Answer 6

I haven't spent much time looking for removing the quotes. But, here is a workaround.

get-process | Export-Csv -NoTypeInformation -Verbose -Path $env:temp\test.csv
$csv = Import-Csv -Path $env:temp\test.csv

This is a quick workaround and there may be a better way to do this.