PowerShell: Output CSV From Two or More Arrays

The other day had created two arrays with the same length and I wanted to output them as columns in a CSV file. I couldn’t find an exact cmdlet to do this so I wrote a small script. Let’s get started.

If you have two arrays such as:

$arr1 = 'a', 'b', 'c', 'd'
$arr2 =  1 ,  2 ,  3 ,  4

I want to output the two arrays into a CSV such as each array is a column:

col1,col2
a,1
b,2
c,3
d,4

Effectively, $arr1 and $arr2 are columns for the CSV file.

ℹ️ I assume that all arrays are the same length. We can add any number of arrays for columns.

We can output the two arrays into a CSV file:

# Single line solution
$result = @("Col1,Col2"); $result += for ($i=0; $i -lt $arr1.Count; $i++) { $arr1[$i] + ", " + $arr2[$i] }; $result > output.csv

# Multi-line solution
$arr1 = 'a', 'b', 'c', 'd'
$arr2 =  1 ,  2 ,  3 ,  4

$outputFile = '.\output.csv'

Out-File $outputFile
Add-Content $outputFile -Value 'Col1,Col2'

for ($i=0; $i -lt $arr1.Count; $i++)
{
    $line = $arr1[$i] + ", " + $arr2[$i]
    Add-Content $outputFile -Value $line
};

The script works by iterating through the arrays. For each value in the arrays output it in a comma seperated line.

Now we can import the CSV back into PowerShell and work with it again or use in Excel:

$myCsv = Import-Csv .\output.csv

# Output:
#
# col1 col2
# ---- ----
# a    1
# b    2
# c    3
# d    4

I hope it helps! ✌️👩‍💻