How can I count the number of CSV columns when the file has multiline data and no header - powershell

Question

My CSV files have no headers and multi line entries like this:
11;"multi line
col12";13;foobar;foobar
21;22;23;24;25
And I'd like to count the number of columns. So 5 in this example. How do I do that?
What I tried:
Import-CSV doesn't work without the header parameter due to duplicate entries on the first line.
(Import-Csv .\bad.csv -Delimiter ";" | get-member -type NoteProperty).count
Adding a header parameter skews the count.
(Import-Csv .\bad.csv -Delimiter ";" -Header (1..99) | get-member -type NoteProperty).count
I had to abort reading the file manually via Get-Content because of all the parsing I would have to handle manually. Escaping characters and multi line entries...
My version of PowerShell is 3 and I have to port my script to version 2 later on.

Answer 1

If you are willing to accept the caveat that this could miscount the number of columns if there are quoted delimiters in string this could be good enough for you.
$path = "c:\temp\test.txt"
$delimiter = ";"
$numberOfColumns = Get-Content $path |
ForEach-Object{($_.split($delimiter)).Count} |
Measure-Object -Maximum |
Select-Object -ExpandProperty Maximum
Import-Csv $path -Header (1..$numberOfColumns) -Delimiter $delimiter
Read in the file with Get-Content and isolate the maximum number of columns by
splitting each line on its delimiter and then using that value to import the CSV. If the file is large you can read in the file once with Get-Content and then use ConvertTo-CSV once you know your column count.
If all lines contain a line break on them the above logic would fail. Still we could temporarily scrub the data by removing the correct line breaks in order to get the accurate count.
$delimiter = ";"
$fileData = (Get-Content $path | Out-String)
$numberOfColumns = ((($fileData -replace "(`"[^;]+?)`r`n",'$1') -split "`r`n" | Select -First 1).split($delimiter)).Count
$fileData | ConvertFrom-Csv -Header (1..$numberOfColumns) -Delimiter $delimiter
What this will do is find lines that end where there is a double quote followed by data that does not contain the delimiter. We also match the newline that follows but drop that same new line in the replacement. If that is done we know that the first line is proper. Use that same line to split and count just like before.

Answer 2

Since Excel knows, let's ask him :
$path = "path\to\bad.csv"
$excel = New-Object -ComObject Excel.Application
$workbook = $excel.Workbooks.Open($path)
$sheet = $workbook.ActiveSheet
$columnIndex = 1
while($sheet.Cells.Item(1, $columnIndex).Text -ne "") {
$columnIndex++
}
"There are $($columnIndex - 1) columns in CSV file $path"
Start-Sleep -Seconds 1
Get-Process excel | Stop-Process -Force
As pointed out by Ansgar Wiechers in comments, there is a much shorter solution :
$path = "path\to\bad.csv"
$excel = New-Object -ComObject Excel.Application
$workbook = $excel.Workbooks.Open($path)
$sheet = $workbook.ActiveSheet
$columnCount = $sheet.UsedRange.Columns.Count
"There are $columnCount columns in CSV file $path"
Start-Sleep -Seconds 1
Get-Process excel | Stop-Process -Force
(I know my way of killing Excel is dirty, but iirc it takes too much code to do so)

Answer 3

I know this is very old, but I came across a similar situation (did not have have rows of varying columns) today and found my own solution so I thought I would share for anyone else coming into this situation. My solution was to use Get-Content for the first row of the CSV and -split on the delimiter (,) to create an array and then return the count of the array. As mentioned in replies above, this will not account for delimiters existing within quotations.
((Get-Content $PathToCsv)[0] -split ",").count

Answer 4

I had the same issue and went with AAgent suggestion.
$CommaCount = ((Get-Content $PathToCsv)[0] -split ",").count
$SemicolonCount = ((Get-Content $PathToCsv)[0] -split ";").count
if ($CommaCount -gt $SemicolonCount){
$CMSlist = Import-Csv ($PathToCsv) –Delimiter “,”
}
else{
$CMSlist = Import-Csv ($PathToCsv) –Delimiter “;”