Importing CSV file and parsing it

Question

First of all I am very new to writing powershell code.  Therefore, my question could be very rudimentary, but I cannot find an answer, so please help.
I'm trying to read a CSV file and parse it.  I cannot figure out how to access nth element without hardcoding its name.
$data = Import-Csv $file   #import CSV file
# read column headers (manually read the first row of the data file, or import it from other source, or ...)
$file_dump = Get-Content $file  #OK, I'm sure there is another way to get just the first line, but that's not relevant
$name_list = $file_dump[0].split(",")
# access element
$temp = $data[$i].Name  # works - but that's HARDCODING the column name into the script - what if someone changes it?
#but what I want to do is
$temp = $data[$i].$name_list[0]
How do I do this in PowerShell?

Answer 1

So you're asking how to get the first data point from the first column, no matter what the header is?
Why won't you know what your input file looks like?
You can always drop the first line of the file to remove the existing headers and then use the -Header parameter of Import-Csv to give yourself known headers to reference (this will only work if you know how many columns to expect, etc etc etc).
http://ss64.com/ps/import-csv.html
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