Spiting Regular expression and accessing Array of Array

Question

An example am trying to understand from website. People2.txt is as follows.

2323:Doe John California

827:Doe Jane Texas

982982:Neuman Alfred Nebraska

I don't get the output as shown from the command below.

*PS C:\ Get-Content people2.txt | %{$data = [regex]::split($_, '\t|:'); Write-Output "$($data[2]) $($data[1]), $($data[3])"}

John Doe, California

Jane Doe, Texas

Alfred Neuman, Nebraska*

I could take out numbers and swapping first and second using

gc C:\appl\ppl.txt | %{$data = [regex]::split($_, ":") ;write-output $data[1] } | Out-File c:\appl\ppll.txt

gc C:\appl\ppll.txt | %{$data = $_.split(" "); Write-Output "$($data[1]) $($data[0]), $($data[2])"}

Please help

**Need to find more efficient ways to do this.

Also I want to understand '\t|:' - is it 'Split at first TAB stop and a : ' ?**

what are you trying to achieve? how would you like to have your output? — user2141046, Jul 17 '13 at 13:03
What is the significance of $($data) enclosing a variable inside a variable ? — user2591459, Jul 17 '13 at 13:08
Output should be like John Doe, California Jane Doe, Texas Alfred Neuman, Nebraska* — user2591459, Jul 17 '13 at 13:08

Jake Heidt · Answer 1 · 2013-07-17 13:09:18Z

up vote 0 down vote

Just threw this off the top of my head: ^(?<number>\d+):(?<first>\w+)\s+(?<last>\w+)\s(?<location>.*)$

answered Jul 17 '13 at 13:09

Jake Heidt
967310

1 Answer 1