PowerShell Single Column to Multiple Columns

This thing will take a single column of text, split it up into columns and put it on screen - But it could be adapted easily to some other output.
A couple of things to note:

• '$pad' is there for readability - so the columns have some padding.
• '-HideTableHeaders'
• The 'Function' items inside this, especially the 'ListToArray' comes in handy for me all the time. I dropped it in this way, just to share it in a way that that stood out.
• This could be done in fewer lines, and I do like brevity, but I wanted to leave it more 'spelled' out, for illustrative purposes.
  

Using the 50 states to show it working.
Function '#of columns' "Data source"

Column2Columns 3 $Data Column2Columns 5 $Data Column2Columns 10 $Data

Examples below the code:

$Data = ("Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming") Function Column2Columns { ################################ <# .DESCRIPTION       Takes a single column of data (as a string), splits it into a specified number of columns, as its output. .EXAMPLE     # Three columns       Column2Columns 3 $Data .EXAMPLE     # Two columns       Column2Columns 2 $Blah .EXAMPLE     # Four columns     Column2Columns 4 $LongList #>     Param     (          [Parameter(Mandatory=$true, Position=0)]          [int]  $Columns,          [Parameter(Mandatory=$true, Position=1)]          [string] $Data     ) Function ListToArray { ($Args).Split("`n|`r",[System.StringSplitOptions]::RemoveEmptyEntries) } Function AddMembr {$Stack | Add-Member -membertype noteproperty -name "Item$Counter_Data" -Value "$_$pad"} $pad = "    " $Counter_Data = 0 $Columns_Array = @() $Stack = new-object psobject ListToArray $Data |  % { $Counter_Data++   If ($Counter_Data -lt ($Columns)) { AddMembr }   If ($Counter_Data -ge ($Columns)) { AddMembr     $Counter_Data = 0     $Columns_Array += $Stack     $Stack = new-object psobject   } } $Columns_Array += $Stack $Columns_Array =  $Columns_Array | ? { !([string]::IsNullOrEmpty($_)) } $Columns_Array | ft -HideTableHeaders } # END Function

 

Examples: