How can I make this PowerShell script parse large files faster?

Your script reads one line at a time (slow!) and stores almost the entire file in memory (big!).

Try this (not tested extensively):

$path = "E:\Documents\Projects\ESPS\Dev\DataFiles\DimProductionOrderOperation"
$infile = "14SEP11_ProdOrderOperations.txt"
$outfile = "PROCESSED_14SEP11_ProdOrderOperations.txt"

$batch = 1000

[regex]$match_regex = '^\|.+\|.+\|.+'
[regex]$replace_regex = '^\|(.+)\|$'

$header_line = (Select-String -Path $path\$infile -Pattern $match_regex -list).line

[regex]$header_regex = [regex]::escape($header_line)

$header_line.trim('|') | Set-Content $path\$outfile

Get-Content $path\$infile -ReadCount $batch |
    ForEach {
             $_ -match $match_regex -NotMatch $header_regex -Replace $replace_regex ,'$1' | Out-File $path\$outfile -Append
    }

That's a compromise between memory usage and speed. The -match and -replace operators will work on an array, so you can filter and replace an entire array at once without having to foreach through every record. The -readcount will cause the file to be read in chunks of $batch records, so you're basically reading in 1000 records at a time, doing the match and replace on that batch then appending the result to your output file. Then it goes back for the next 1000 records. Increasing the size of $batch should speed it up, but it will make it use more memory. Adjust that to suit your resources.

The Get-Content cmdlet does not perform as well as a StreamReader when dealing with very large files. You can read a file line by line using a StreamReader like this:

$path = 'C:\A-Very-Large-File.txt'
$r = [IO.File]::OpenText($path)
while ($r.Peek() -ge 0) {
    $line = $r.ReadLine()
    # Process $line here...
}
$r.Dispose()

Some performance comparisons:

Measure-Command {Get-Content .\512MB.txt > $null}

Total Seconds: 49.4742533

Measure-Command {
    $r = [IO.File]::OpenText('512MB.txt')
    while ($r.Peek() -ge 0) {
        $r.ReadLine() > $null
    }
    $r.Dispose()
}

Total Seconds: 27.666803

This is almost a non-answer...I love PowerShell...but I will not use it to parse log files, especially large log files. Use Microsoft's Log Parser.

C:\>type input.txt | logparser "select substr(field1,1) from STDIN" -i:TSV -nskiplines:14 -headerrow:off -iseparator:spaces -o:tsv -headers:off -stats:off

How can I make this PowerShell script parse large files faster?

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