Why is outputting data with PowerShell as a table limited to 4 columns?

Question

A snippet of my code:

$ipaddress = '127.0.0.1'
$port = 135,137,138,139,443,445   

for($i=0; $i -lt $port.length; $i++)
{

$out = new-object psobject

$out | add-member noteproperty Host $ipaddress
$out | add-member noteproperty Port $port[$i]
$out | add-member noteproperty Isopen $isopen[$i]
$out | add-member noteproperty Desc "Desc"
$out | add-member noteproperty Notes $Notes[$i]
$out | add-member noteproperty Issue $issue[$i]


Write-Output $out 

 }

What I'm trying to do is print out the results of my port scanner into a nice table. This works fine when there's 4 or less columns:

But Whenever I add more columns, even though there's space on the screen, it converts it into a list:

When I try to append "Format-Table" to it, it writes out the headers each time:

Write-Output $out | Format-Table

If I copy the line "Write-Output $out" outside the loop, it only prints out the last member. Any ideas on how to tackle this?

Answer 1

As you've found, PowerShell formats your output in a table by default, but opts for list view when the objects being formatted have more than 4 visible members.

You can override this by explicitly invoking your preferred Format-* command. Simply "collect" all the output objects in an variable then explicitly pipe them to Format-Table:

$ipaddress = '127.0.0.1'
$port = 135,137,138,139,443,445   

$objects = for($i=0; $i -lt $port.length; $i++)
{

    $out = new-object psobject

    $out | add-member noteproperty Host $ipaddress
    $out | add-member noteproperty Port $port[$i]
    $out | add-member noteproperty Isopen $isopen[$i]
    $out | add-member noteproperty Desc "Desc"
    $out | add-member noteproperty Notes $Notes[$i]
    $out | add-member noteproperty Issue $issue[$i]

    Write-Output $out
}

$objects |Format-Table

---

Unless you're running your code on PowerShell 2.0, I'd suggest using the 3.0 [pscustomobject] syntax for creating your object (and perhaps turn the whole thing into a function):

function Get-PortStatus
{
  param(
    [string]$IPAddress = '127.0.0.1',
    [intp[]]$Port = 135,137,138,139,443,445
  )

  # populate $isopen, $notes, $issue etc. here ...

  for($i=0; $i -lt $port.length; $i++)
  {
    # Write-Output is implied when the new object isn't assigned to anything
    [pscustomobject]@{
      Host   = $ipaddress
      Port   = $port[$i]
      IsOpen = $isopen[$i]
      Desc   = "Desc"
      Notes  = $Notes[$i]
      Issue  = $issue[$i]
    }
  }
}

Now you can do:

PS C:\Users\Gabrielius> Get-PortStatus -IPAddress '10.0.0.10' -Port 80,443 |Format-Table