Is there a way to convert tables of text into a PowerShell Object

Question

There are many tools that output their data in in a table format. One such example is diskpart. Shaving off some extraneous output, you would get something like this.

Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
--------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
Disk 0    Online          136 GB      0 B
Disk 1    Offline         136 GB   136 GB
Disk 2    Reserved       1027 MB      0 B        *
Disk 3    Reserved        500 GB      0 B        *
Disk 4    Reserved        500 GB      0 B        *
Disk 5    Reserved         10 GB      0 B        *
Disk 6    Reserved         13 GB      0 B        *
Disk 7    Reserved       4102 MB      0 B        *
Disk 8    Reserved       7169 MB      0 B        *
Disk 9    Reserved        503 GB      0 B        *
Disk 10   Reserved        506 GB      0 B        *
Disk 11   Reserved        500 GB      0 B        *
Disk 12   Reserved       3891 GB      0 B        *
Disk 13   Reserved        500 GB      0 B        *
Disk 14   Reserved       3891 GB      0 B        *
Disk 15   Reserved       1843 GB      0 B
Disk 16   Reserved       3072 GB      0 B        *
Disk 17   Reserved       2048 GB      0 B        *
Disk 18   Reserved        808 GB      0 B        *
Disk 19   Reserved        805 GB      0 B        *
Disk 20   Reserved       3891 GB      0 B        *
Disk 21   Reserved       3891 GB      0 B        *
Disk 22   Reserved       3891 GB      0 B        *
Disk 23   Reserved       6144 GB      0 B        *

Another example is netstat, which looks like the following:

 Proto  Local Address          Foreign Address        State
 TCP    0.0.0.0:80             7ANDYS:0               LISTENING
 TCP    0.0.0.0:135            7ANDYS:0               LISTENING
 TCP    0.0.0.0:443            7ANDYS:0               LISTENING
 TCP    0.0.0.0:445            7ANDYS:0               LISTENING
 TCP    0.0.0.0:1025           7ANDYS:0               LISTENING
 TCP    0.0.0.0:1026           7ANDYS:0               LISTENING
 TCP    0.0.0.0:1027           7ANDYS:0               LISTENING
 TCP    0.0.0.0:1028           7ANDYS:0               LISTENING
 TCP    0.0.0.0:1029           7ANDYS:0               LISTENING
 TCP    0.0.0.0:2048           7ANDYS:0               LISTENING

I am trying to figure out if there is a fairly repeatable way to convert this type of data into an object, such that the properties of the object are the headers in the first row. I know there are a bunch of ways to do this for the output of individual tools using regex, but I am looking for more of a strategy on how to go about solving this, rather than a one-off solution just for diskpart or netstat.

I was trying to figure out how to use Lee Holmes' script up on Poshcode called Convert-TextToObject, but wasn't quite sure where to start.

Answer 1

Have you seen this: http://thepowershellguy.com/blogs/posh/archive/2007/03/24/hey-powershell-guy-how-can-i-parse-a-tab-delimited-file-and-then-save-that-as-a-comma-separated-values-file.aspx It might be what you are looking for.