How would you go about loading a state & capitol file into a hashtable?  Example of a hashtable that I can grasp shows state (key) and then state capitol (value).  No one is going to key that in more than once, so how would you go about creating the 51 entries and then loading them into script?  And then, how would I save a hash table to a text file to reuse later?

The first part of your problem is load a file into a hash table

Create a file called states.csv with this data

State, capital
Alabama,Montgomery
Alaska,Juneau
Arizona,Phoenix
Arkansas,Little Rock
California,Sacramento
Colorado,Denver
Connecticut,Hartford
Delaware,Dover
Florida,Tallahassee
Georgia,Atlanta
Hawaii,Honolulu
Idaho,Boise
Illinois,Springfield
Indiana,Indianapolis
Iowa,Des Moines
Kansas,Topeka
Kentucky,Frankfort
Louisiana,Baton Rouge
Maine,Augusta
Maryland,Annapolis
Massachusetts,Boston
Michigan,Lansing
Minnesota,Saint Paul
Mississippi,Jackson
Missouri,Jefferson City
Montana,Helena
Nebraska,Lincoln
Nevada,Carson City
New Hampshire,Concord
New Jersey,Trenton
New Mexico,Santa Fe
New York,Albany
North Carolina,Raleigh
North Dakota,Bismarck
Ohio,Columbus
Oklahoma,Oklahoma City
Oregon,Salem
Pennsylvania,Harrisburg
Rhode Island,Providence
South Carolina,Columbia
South Dakota,Pierre
Tennessee,Nashville
Texas,Austin
Utah,Salt Lake City
Vermont,Montpelier
Virginia,Richmond
Washington,Olympia
West Virginia,Charleston
Wisconsin,Madison
Wyoming,Cheyenne

I assume it is coorect

then use this to load it

$stcap

= @{}

Import-Csv

Good reason, I read the article just couldn't see how to apply it to load and unload.  For all the good books, articles, and webcasts it always seems they demonstrate one variable and real life has multiple variables.

If I had used Spokane as capital of Washington I would have removed all doubt as to source of question.

In terms of long term storage for the hash table for reuse try this

$stcap | Export-Clixml -Path state.xml

where $stcap is the hash table we created earlier

To reuse

$stc1 = Import-Clixml -Path state.xml

Reading and not remembering clearly or understanding completely.  Statement was made that saving as XML will preserve more "object" information.  I am not sure what I am gaining with xml versus csv or even text.  I do see in my real life problem that once I parse a file into meaningful parts, redoing the same input file would be a poor use of time.  I am not conversant enough with XML to know why I should like that better.  My background goes back to IBM dos 1.0 and CPM, I've spent time writing Korn shell scripts, DBA, programmer, etc.  I am dedicated to finding the easiest way to do something no matter how much effort it takes to get there and have learned that one time only programs/patches are still running 15 years later.

kct

For soemthing like the example of the state capitals I would go with the XML as you are guaranteed to be loading the same data each time.  If the data will be ammended then consider csv\txt file