Powershell, retrieve columns width from a previous Format-Table -Autosize

Question

Format-Table -Autosize is great but when used with -GroupBy , the columns width is computed group by group, not for the whole thing.

My idea was to $tmp = $data | Format-Table -Autosize $tmp = $data | Format-Table -Autosize , retrieve the computed columns width from $tmp , build a hash table describing the columns with their width and then $data | Sort-Object <column> | Format-Table $hash -GroupBy <column> $data | Sort-Object <column> | Format-Table $hash -GroupBy <column>

But despite many attempts to Google Format-Table result structure and $tmp | Get-Member $tmp | Get-Member I can not find the information I'm looking for.

Do you have any clue?

Answer 1

Have fun digging. It looks like the column widths are in there somewhere:

ps terminal | format-table -autosize | select *

ClassId2e4f51ef21dd47e99d3c952918aff9cd : 033ecb2bc07a4d43b5ef94ed5a35d280
pageHeaderEntry                         :
pageFooterEntry                         :
autosizeInfo                            : Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.Internal.Format.AutosizeInfo
shapeInfo                               : Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.Internal.Format.TableHeaderInfo
groupingEntry                           :

ClassId2e4f51ef21dd47e99d3c952918aff9cd : 9e210fe47d09416682b841769c78b8a3
shapeInfo                               :
groupingEntry                           :

ClassId2e4f51ef21dd47e99d3c952918aff9cd : 27c87ef9bbda4f709f6b4002fa4af63c
formatEntryInfo                         : Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.Internal.Format.TableRowEntry
outOfBand                               : False
writeStream                             : None

ClassId2e4f51ef21dd47e99d3c952918aff9cd : 4ec4f0187cb04f4cb6973460dfe252df
groupingEntry                           :

ClassId2e4f51ef21dd47e99d3c952918aff9cd : cf522b78d86c486691226b40aa69e95c
groupingEntry                           :


$a = ps terminal | format-table -AutoSize
$a | foreach gettype

IsPublic IsSerial Name                                     BaseType
-------- -------- ----                                     --------
False    False    FormatStartData                          Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.Internal.Format.StartData
False    False    GroupStartData                           Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.Internal.Format.StartData
False    False    FormatEntryData                          Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.Internal.Format.PacketInfoData
False    False    GroupEndData                             Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.Internal.Format.ControlInfoData
False    False    FormatEndData                            Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.Internal.Format.ControlInfoData

Hmm... I appear to have hit a dead end.

$a[0] | select -expand autosizeinfo
out-lineoutput : Unknown class Id a27f094f0eec4d64845801a4c06a32ae.
+ CategoryInfo          : InvalidData: (Microsoft.PowerShel\u2026Format.AutosizeInfo:PSObject) [out-lineoutput], PSArgumentException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : FormatObjectDeserializerDeserializeInvalidClassId,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.OutLineOutputCommand