Merging multiple CSV files into one using PowerShell

Hello I'm looking for powershell script which would merge all csv files in a directory into one text file (.txt) . All csv files have same header which is always stored in a first row of every file. So I need to take header from the first file, but in rest of the files the first row should be skipped. I was able to find batch file which is doing exactly what I need, but I have more than 4000 csv files in a single directory and it takes more than 45 minutes to do the job.

@echo off
ECHO Set working directory
cd /d %~dp0
Deleting existing combined file
del summary.txt
setlocal ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION
set cnt=1
for %%i in (*.csv) do (
 if !cnt!==1 (
 for /f "delims=" %%j in ('type "%%i"') do echo %%j >> summary.txt
) else (
 for /f "skip=1 delims=" %%j in ('type "%%i"') do echo %%j >> summary.txt
 )
 set /a cnt+=1
 )

Any suggestion how to create powershell script which would be more efficient than this batch code?

Thank you.

John

Solution 1:

If you're after a one-liner you can pipe each csv to an Import-Csv and then immediately pipe that to Export-Csv. This will retain the initial header row and exclude the remaining files header rows. It will also process each csv one at a time rather than loading all into memory and then dumping them into your merged csv.

Get-ChildItem -Filter *.csv | Select-Object -ExpandProperty FullName | Import-Csv | Export-Csv .\merged\merged.csv -NoTypeInformation -Append

Solution 2:

This will append all the files together reading them one at a time:

get-childItem "YOUR_DIRECTORY\*.txt" 
| foreach {[System.IO.File]::AppendAllText
 ("YOUR_DESTINATION_FILE", [System.IO.File]::ReadAllText($_.FullName))}

# Placed on seperate lines for readability

This one will place a new line at the end of each file entry if you need it:

get-childItem "YOUR_DIRECTORY\*.txt" | foreach
{[System.IO.File]::AppendAllText("YOUR_DESTINATION_FILE", 
[System.IO.File]::ReadAllText($_.FullName) + [System.Environment]::NewLine)}

Skipping the first line:

$getFirstLine = $true

get-childItem "YOUR_DIRECTORY\*.txt" | foreach {
    $filePath = $_

    $lines =  $lines = Get-Content $filePath  
    $linesToWrite = switch($getFirstLine) {
           $true  {$lines}
           $false {$lines | Select -Skip 1}

    }

    $getFirstLine = $false
    Add-Content "YOUR_DESTINATION_FILE" $linesToWrite
    }