Data extraction using Regular expressions - regex

Question

Hi I have a file of the format
[stuff not needed]Type:A1[stuff not needed]
[stuff not needed]Name:B1[stuff not needed]
Row:Sampletext
Row:Sampletext
[stuff not needed]Type:A2[stuff not needed]
[stuff not needed]Name:B2[stuff not needed]
Row:Sampletext2
Row:Sampletext2
Row:Sampletext2
I am using regexin powershell to extract the data.
I am using something like Regex1|Regex2|Regex3 ,and saving the output to a file.
The output comes in the format:
A1
B1
Sampletext
Sampletext
A2
B2
Sampletext2
Sampletext2
Sampletext2
I want it in the format
A1 B1 Sampletext
A1 B1 Sampletext
A2 B2 Sampletext2
A2 B2 Sampletext2
A2 B2 Sampletext2
I am new to PowerShell, is there any way I can do this ?
This is the exact code the I have:
$input_path = ‘idx.txt’
$output_file = ‘output.txt’
$regex = ‘Type:\s([A-Za-z]*)|Name:\s\s([A-Za-z]*)|[A-Za-z][a-z0-9A-Z_]*(?:\s*[0-6]\s*[0-4]\s\s[\s\d]\d\s*0)’
select-string -Path $input_path -Pattern $regex -AllMatches | % { $_.Matches } | % { $_.Value } > $output_file
The data is too big to be posted here ,but ill just create a sample data set.But the regular expressions are working ,maybe crude but its capturing the data required .
for the sake of the example ,we can have Type:([A-Za-z])|Name:([A-Za-z])|Row:([A-Za-z]*) as the regular expressions

Answer 1

Check every line if it has type or name and set the corresponding variables only, but if it has row output the type and name variables along with the current row contents.
$allmatches = Select-String '(Type|Name|Row):\s*(\w*)' $input_path -allmatches
$output = foreach ($m in $allmatches) {
$data = $m.Matches.Groups[2].Value
switch ($m.Matches.Groups[1].Value) {
'Type' { $type = $data; break }
'Name' { $name = $data; break }
'Row' { "$type $name $data" }
}
}
$output | Set-Content $output_path -Encoding UTF8
Notes:
We use a faster foreach expression instead of slower pipelining via foreach with a scriptblock.
\w in regex means any word character including a-zA-Z0-9 and _ and some more
Regex-matching and string comparison are case-insensitive in PowerShell by default