Get first two items positionally from Import-CSV row - powershell

Question

I have a series of files that have changed some header naming and column counts over time. However, the files always have the first column as the start date and second column as the end date.
I would like to get just these two columns, but the name has changed over time.
What I have tried is this:
$FileContents=Import-CSV -Path "$InputFilePath"
foreach ($line in $FileContents)
{
$StartDate=$line[0]
$EndDate=$line[1]
}
...but $FileContents is (I believe) an array of a type (objects?) that I'm not sure how to positionally access in PowerShell. Any help would be appreciated.
Edit: The files switched from comma delimiter to pipe delimiter a while back and there are 1000s of files to work with, so I use Import-CSV because it can implicitly read either format.

Answer 1

You could use the -Header parameter to give the first to columns of the csv the header names you want. Then you'll skip the first line that has the old header.
$FileContents = Import-CSV -Path "$InputFilePath" -Header "StartDate","EndDate" | Select-Object "StartDate","EndDate" -Skip 1
foreach ($line in $FileContents) {
$StartDate = $line.StartDate
$EndDate = $line.EndDate
}
Here's an example:
Example.csv
a,b,c
1,2,3
4,5,6
Import-CSV -Path Example.csv -Header "StartDate","EndDate" | Select-Object "StartDate","EndDate" -Skip 1
StartDate EndDate
--------- -------
1 2
4 5

Answer 2

If you use Import-Csv, PowerShell will indeed create an object for you. The "columns" are calles properties. You can select properties with Select-Object. You have to name the properties, you want to select. Since you don't know the property names in advance, you can get the names with Get-Member. The first two properties should match the first two columns in your CSV.
Use the following sample code and apply it to your script:
$csv = #'
1,2,3,4,5
a,b,c,d,e
g,h,i,j,k
'#
$csv = $csv | ConvertFrom-Csv
$properties = $csv | Get-Member -MemberType NoteProperty | Select-Object -First 2 -ExpandProperty Name
$csv | Select-Object -Property $properties

Answer 3

How about this:
$FileContents=get-content -Path "$InputFilePath"
for ($i=0;$i -lt $FileContents.count;$i++){
$textrow = ($FileContents[$i]).split(",")
$StartDate=$textrow[0]
$EndDate=$textrow[1]
#do what you want with the variables
write-host $startdate
write-host $EndDate
}
pending you are referencing a csv file....

Answer 4

Other solution with foreach (%=alias of foreach) and split :
Get-Content "example.csv" | select -skip 1 | %{$row=$_ -split ',', 3; [pscustomobject]#{NewCol1=$row[0];NewCol2=$row[1]}}

Answer 5

You can build predicate into the select too like this :
Get-Content "example.csv" | select #{N="Newcol1";E={($_ -split ',', 3)[0]}}, #{N="Newcol2";E={($_ -split ',', 3)[1]}} -skip 1

Answer 6

With convertfrom-string
Get-Content "example.csv" | ConvertFrom-Csv -Delimiter ',' -Header col1, col2 | select -skip 1