Is this the best way to replace text in all of an object's properties in powershell? - powershell

Question

I have a large CSV file in which some fields have a new line embedded. Excel 2016 produces errors when importing a CSV with rows which have fields with a new line embedded.
Based on this post, I wrote code to replace any new line in any field with a space. Below is a code block that duplicates the functionality and issue. Option 1 works. Option 2, which is commented out, casts my object to a string. I was hoping Option 2 might run faster.
Question: Is there a better way to do this to optimize for performance processing very large files?
$array = #([PSCustomObject]#{"ID"="1"; "Name"="Joe`nSmith"},
[PSCustomObject]#{"ID"="2"; "Name"="Jasmine Baker"})
$array = $array | ForEach-Object {
#Option 1: produces an Object, but is code optimized?
foreach ($n in $_.PSObject.Properties.Name) {
$_.PSObject.Properties[$n].Value = `
$_.PSObject.Properties[$n].Value -replace "`n"," "
}
#Option 2: produces a string, not an object
#$_ = $_ -replace "`n"," "
$_
}
Keep in mind that in my real-world use case, each row has > 15 fields and any combination of them may have one or more new lines embedded.

Answer 1

Use the fast TextFieldParser to read, process, and build the CSV from the file (PowerShell 3+):
[Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName('Microsoft.VisualBasic') >$null
$parser = New-Object Microsoft.VisualBasic.FileIO.TextFieldParser 'r:\1.csv'
$parser.SetDelimiters(',')
$header = $parser.ReadFields()
$CSV = while (!$parser.EndOfData) {
$i = 0
$row = [ordered]#{}
foreach ($field in $parser.ReadFields()) {
$row[$header[$i++]] = $field.replace("`n", ' ')
}
[PSCustomObject]$row
}
Or modify each field in-place in an already existing CSV array:
foreach ($row in $CSV) {
foreach ($field in $row.PSObject.Properties) {
$field.value = $field.value.replace("`n", ' ')
}
}
Notes:
foreach statement is much faster than piping to ForEach-Object (also aliased as foreach)
$stringVariable.replace() is faster then -replace operator