Format-Table out of Two Lists? - powershell

Question

I've had this idea about getting the output from 2 separate functions, that return a PSCustomObject as a list, and formatting them into one table. My problem is simple... I don't know how to do it. lol
With the various of combinations that I tried, here's whats given me some promising results:
$Var1 = [PSCustomObject]#{
UserName = $env:USERNAME
Stuff1 = 'stuff1'
} | Format-List | Out-String -Stream
$Var2 = [PSCustomObject]#{
ComputerName = $env:COMPUTERNAME
Stuff2 = 'stuff2'
} | Format-List | Out-String -Stream
[PSCustomObject]#{
TableOne = $Var1.Trim().Foreach({$_})
TableTwo = $Var2.Trim()
} | Format-Table -AutoSize
The output:
TableOne TableTwo
-------- --------
{, , UserName : Abraham, Stuff1 : stuff1...} {, , ComputerName : DESKTOP-OEREJ77, Stuff2 : stuff2...}
I say promising in the respect that it shows the actual content of $var1 and 2, whereas my other attempts didn't. I also left the .foreach() operator there to show one of the many many different tricks I tried to get this working. For a quick second I thought the Out-String cmdlet would've done the trick for me, but was unsuccessful.
Has anyone ever done something similar to this?
EDIT:
Nevermind, I figured it out.
Used a for loop to iterate through each line assigning it the the PSCustomObject one at a time. Also used the .Where() operator to remove white spaces, and compared the two arrays to find the largest number to use it as the count.
$Var1 = $([PSCustomObject]#{
UserName = $env:USERNAME
Stuff1 = 'stuff1'
} | Format-List | Out-String -Stream).Where{$_ -ne ''}
$Var2 = $([PSCustomObject]#{
ComputerName = $env:COMPUTERNAME
Stuff2 = 'stuff2'
ExtraStuff = 'More'
} | Format-List | Out-String -Stream).Where{$_ -ne ''}
$Count = ($Var1.Count, $Var2.Count | Measure-Object -Maximum).Maximum
$(for($i=0;$i -lt $Count; $i++) {
[PSCustomObject]#{
TableOne = $Var1[$i]
TableTwo = $Var2[$i]
}
}) | Format-Table -AutoSize
Output:
TableOne TableTwo
-------- --------
UserName : Abraham ComputerName : DESKTOP-OEREJ77
Stuff1 : stuff1 Stuff2 : stuff2
ExtraStuff : More

Answer 1

It's an interesting way to format two collections with corresponding elements.
To indeed support two collections with multiple elements, a few tweaks to your approach are required:
# First collection, containing 2 sample objects.
$coll1 =
[PSCustomObject] #{
UserName = $env:USERNAME
Stuff1 = 'stuff1'
},
[PSCustomObject] #{
UserName = $env:USERNAME + '_2'
Stuff1 = 'stuff2'
}
# Second collection; ditto.
$coll2 =
[PSCustomObject] #{
ComputerName = $env:COMPUTERNAME
Stuff2 = 'stuff2'
ExtraStuff = 'More'
},
[PSCustomObject]#{
ComputerName = $env:COMPUTERNAME + '_2'
Stuff2 = 'stuff2_2'
ExtraStuff = 'More_2'
}
# Stream the two collections in tandem, and output a Format-List
# representation of each object in a pair side by side.
& {
foreach ($i in 0..([Math]::Max($coll1.Count, $coll2.Count) - 1)) {
[PSCustomObject] #{
TableOne = ($coll1[$i] | Format-List | Out-String).Trim() + "`n"
TableTwo = ($coll2[$i] | Format-List | Out-String).Trim() + "`n"
}
}
} | Format-Table -AutoSize -Wrap
The above ensures that multiple objects are properly placed next to each other, and yields something like the following:
TableOne TableTwo
-------- --------
UserName : jdoe ComputerName : WS1
Stuff1 : stuff1 Stuff2 : stuff2
ExtraStuff : More
UserName : jdoe_2 ComputerName : WS1_2
Stuff1 : stuff2 Stuff2 : stuff2_2
ExtraStuff : More_2