I'm new to PowerShell and trying to remove white space from a file. The file contains some values and has white spaces (indentation):
Hostname=hostname1
Server=server1
Directory=C:\Program Files\Test
Database=db1
I am trying to remove white space, but preserve the "directory" line as it contains a whitespace in the path C:\Program Files\Test and this will break the build. This is the code I have so far:
foreach ($Line in (Get-Content -Path C:\File.txt) | Where-Object {$_ -notcontains "Directory"}) {
$line -replace " ", ""
Set-Content -Path C:\File.txt
}
But this produces an empty file. What am I doing wrong?
Set-Content receives input either via the pipeline or via the parameter -Value. Your code doesn't provide either, so the cmdlet is writing an empty file. Also, your processing would entirely remove all lines containing the string "Directory" from the output.
Change your code to something like this and the problem will disappear:
(Get-Content 'C:\File.txt') | ForEach-Object {
if ($_ -notlike 'Directory=*') {
$_ -replace ' ', ''
} else {
$_
}
} | Set-Content 'C:\File.txt'
If it's only a matter of removing indentation you could use the Trim-function:
$fileContent = Get-Content C:\File.txt
$fileContent | ForEach-Object { $_.Trim() } | Set-Content C:\File.txt
The Trim-function removes only leading and trailing white space. There is also a TrimStart and TrimEnd if you only want to remove either leading or trailing white space.
Note: The content of the file is first stored in a variable to release the lock on the file system before Set-Content is called. If you use a different output file you can pipe the result of Get-Content directly into the ForEach-Object.
Related
I have a set of config files stored in each subfolder within a directory. These config files only contain a single string in the format XXX_YYYYMMDD where XXX is a number e.g. 006, 007 etc, so an example string would be 006_20150101. I want the powershell script to replace the XXX number with a new one in each of these config files. I'm using the below script to achieve that and it works fine. However, the issue is that it puts a new line character (ENTER) at the end of the string which I don't want. Any way to fix this?
$sourceDir = "C:\Users\001"
$configFiles = Get-ChildItem $sourceDir *.dat -rec
foreach ($file in $configFiles)
{
(Get-Content $file.PSPath) |
Foreach-Object { $_ -replace "006", "007" } |
Set-Content $file.PSPath
}
By default set-content ends with a newline, use -NoNewline to not have this behavior:
Set-Content -path $file.PSPath -NoNewline
I dont know if u can use this but you can use regex replace to match the first 3 digits in the string:
$regex = "^\d{3}"
# matches any 3 digits("\d{3}") at the beginning("^") of a string
"124_20201030" -replace $regex, "007"
I know that I can use:
gc c:\FileWithEmptyLines.txt | where {$_ -ne ""} > c:\FileWithNoEmptyLines.txt
to remove empty lines. But How I can remove them with '-replace' ?
I found a nice one liner here >> http://www.pixelchef.net/remove-empty-lines-file-powershell. Just tested it out with several blanks lines including newlines only as well as lines with just spaces, just tabs, and combinations.
(gc file.txt) | ? {$_.trim() -ne "" } | set-content file.txt
See the original for some notes about the code. Nice :)
This piece of code from Randy Skretka is working fine for me, but I had the problem, that I still had a newline at the end of the file.
(gc file.txt) | ? {$_.trim() -ne "" } | set-content file.txt
So I added finally this:
$content = [System.IO.File]::ReadAllText("file.txt")
$content = $content.Trim()
[System.IO.File]::WriteAllText("file.txt", $content)
You can use -match instead -eq if you also want to exclude files that only contain whitespace characters:
#(gc c:\FileWithEmptyLines.txt) -match '\S' | out-file c:\FileWithNoEmptyLines
Not specifically using -replace, but you get the same effect parsing the content using -notmatch and regex.
(get-content 'c:\FileWithEmptyLines.txt') -notmatch '^\s*$' > c:\FileWithNoEmptyLines.txt
To resolve this with RegEx, you need to use the multiline flag (?m):
((Get-Content file.txt -Raw) -replace "(?m)^\s*`r`n",'').trim() | Set-Content file.txt
If you actually want to filter blank lines from a file then you may try this:
(gc $source_file).Trim() | ? {$_.Length -gt 0}
You can't do replacing, you have to replace SOMETHING with SOMETHING, and you neither have both.
This will remove empty lines or lines with only whitespace characters (tabs/spaces).
[IO.File]::ReadAllText("FileWithEmptyLines.txt") -replace '\s+\r\n+', "`r`n" | Out-File "c:\FileWithNoEmptyLines.txt"
(Get-Content c:\FileWithEmptyLines.txt) |
Foreach { $_ -Replace "Old content", " New content" } |
Set-Content c:\FileWithEmptyLines.txt;
file
PS /home/edward/Desktop> Get-Content ./copy.txt
[Desktop Entry]
Name=calibre
Exec=~/Apps/calibre/calibre
Icon=~/Apps/calibre/resources/content-server/calibre.png
Type=Application*
Start by get the content from file and trim the white spaces if any found in each line of the text document. That becomes the object passed to the where-object to go through the array looking at each member of the array with string length greater then 0. That object is passed to replace the content of the file you started with. It would probably be better to make a new file...
Last thing to do is reads back the newly made file's content and see your awesomeness.
(Get-Content ./copy.txt).Trim() | Where-Object{$_.length -gt 0} | Set-Content ./copy.txt
Get-Content ./copy.txt
This removes trailing whitespace and blank lines from file.txt
PS C:\Users\> (gc file.txt) | Foreach {$_.TrimEnd()} | where {$_ -ne ""} | Set-Content file.txt
Get-Content returns immutable array of rows. You can covert this to mutable array and delete neccessary lines by index.Particular indexex you can get with match. After that you can write result to new file with Set-Content. With this approach you can avoid empty lines that powershell replace tool leaves when you try to replace smthing with "". Note that I dont guarantee perfect perfomance. Im not a professional powershell developer))
$fileLines = Get-Content $filePath
$neccessaryLine = Select-String -Path $filePath -Pattern 'something'
if (-Not $neccessaryLine) { exit }
$neccessaryLineIndex = $neccessaryLine.LineNumber - 1
$updatedFileContent = [System.Collections.ArrayList]::new($fileLines)
$updatedFileContent.RemoveAt($neccessaryLineIndex)
$updatedHostsFileContent.RemoveAt($domainInfoLineIndex - 1)
$updatedHostsFileContent | Set-Content $hostsFilePath
Set-Content -Path "File.txt" -Value (get-content -Path "File.txt" | Select-String -Pattern '^\s*$' -NotMatch)
This works for me, originally got the line from here and added Joel's suggested '^\s*$': Using PowerShell to remove lines from a text file if it contains a string
I am trying to get all the lines from an Input file starting with %% and paste it into Output file using powershell.
Used the following code, however I am only getting last line in Output file starting with %% instead of all the lines starting with %%.
I have only started to learn powershell, please help
$Clause = Get-Content "Input File location"
$Outvalue = $Clause | Foreach {
if ($_ -ilike "*%%*")
{
Set-Content "Output file location" $_
}
}
You are looping over the lines in the file, and setting each one as the whole content of the file, overwriting the previous file each time.
You need to either switch to using Add-Content instead of Set-Content, which will append to the file, or change the design to:
Get-Content "input.txt" | Foreach-Object {
if ($_ -like "%%*")
{
$_ # just putting this on its own, sends it on out of the pipeline
}
} | Set-Content Output.txt
Which you would more typically write as:
Get-Content "input.txt" | Where-Object { $_ -like "%%*" } | Set-Content Output.txt
and in the shell, you might write as
gc input.txt |? {$_ -like "%%*"} | sc output.txt
Where the whole file is filtered, and then all the matching lines are sent into Set-Content in one go, not calling Set-Content individually for each line.
NB. PowerShell is case insensitive by default, so -like and -ilike behave the same.
For a small file, Get-Content is nice. But if you start trying to do this on heavier files, Get-Content will eat your memory and leave you hanging.
Keeping it REALLY simple for other Powershell starters out there, you'll be better covered (and with better performance). So, something likes this would do the job:
$inputfile = "C:\Users\JohnnyC\Desktop\inputfile.txt"
$outputfile = "C:\Users\JohnnyC\Desktop\outputfile.txt"
$reader = [io.file]::OpenText($inputfile)
$writer = [io.file]::CreateText($outputfile)
while($reader.EndOfStream -ne $true) {
$line = $reader.Readline()
if ($line -like '%%*') {
$writer.WriteLine($line);
}
}
$writer.Dispose();
$reader.Dispose();
My goal is to replace specific texts in specific lines in a text file, and I want to do that using the pipeline.
At first, I tried to write the code for the text replacement, without the condition that set the replacement to happen only in specific lines:
$fileName = Read-Host "Enter the full path of the file, without quotes"
(Get-Content -Path $fileName -Encoding UTF8) |
ForEach-Object { $_ -replace "01", "January " } |
Set-Content -Path $fileName -Encoding UTF8
It seems that it works. But then, I inserted an IF statement to the pipeline:
$fileName = Read-Host "Enter the full path of the file, without quotes"
(Get-Content -Path $fileName -Encoding UTF8) |
ForEach-Object { if ($_ -match "Month") {$_ -replace "03", "March"} } |
Set-Content -Path $fileName -Encoding UTF8
When I ran the last script, at the end of the process I got a file that includes only the lines that matched the if Statement. If I'm understanding correctly what happened, it seems that only the lines that match the if statement are passed to the next stage in the pipeline. So I understand why the output of the process, but I still can't figure how to solve this - How to pass all the lines in the files through all the stages of the pipeline, but to still make the text replacements to happen only in specific lines that match a specific criteria.
Could you please assist me with this issue?
Please notice that I would like not to use a temporary file for this and also remember that I prefer an elegant way of doing this, using the pipeline.
You have to add else statement like:
(Get-Content -Path $fileName -Encoding UTF8) |
Foreach-Object { If ($_ - match "Month") { $_ -replace "03", "March"} else { $_ } } |
Set-Content -Path $fileName - Encoding UTF8
Without else you didn't put line in pipeline. So your if was like filter
Depending on what your input data looks like you may not need a nested conditional (or a ForEach-Object) at all. If your input looks for instance like this:
Month: 03
you can do the replacement like this:
(Get-Content -Path $fileName -Encoding UTF8) -replace '^(.*Month.*)03','$1March' |
Set-Content -Path $fileName -Encoding UTF8
That will modify just the lines matching the pattern (^(.*Month.*)03) and leave everything else unchanged.
I have a situation that I need to remove some words from all text file in a folder.
I know how to do that only in 1 file, but I need to do it automatically for all text files in that folder. I got no idea at all how to do it in powershell.
The name of the files are random.
Please help.
This is the code
$txt = get-content c:\work\test\01.i
$txt[0] = $txt[0] -replace '-'
$txt[$txt.length - 1 ] = $txt[$txt.length - 1 ] -replace '-'
$txt | set-content c:\work\test\01.i
Basicly it jsut removes a "-" from first line and last line, but i need to do this on all files in the folder.
Get-ChildItem c:\yourfolder -Filter *.txt | Foreach-Object{
... your code goes here ...
... you can access the current file name via $_.FullName ...
}
Here is a full working example:
Get-ChildItem c:\yourdirectory -Filter *.txt | Foreach-Object{
(Get-Content $_.FullName) |
Foreach-Object {$_ -replace "what you want to replace", "what to replace it with"} |
Set-Content $_.FullName
}
Now for a quick explanation:
Get-ChildItem with a Filter: gets all items ending in .txt
1st ForEach-Object: will perform the commands within the curly brackets
Get-Content $_.FullName: grabs the name of the .txt file
2nd ForEach-Object: will perform the replacement of text within the file
Set-Content $_.FullName: replaces the original file with the new file containing the changes
Important Note: -replace is working with a regular expression so if your string of text has any special characters
something like this ?
ls c:\temp\*.txt | %{ $newcontent=(gc $_) -replace "test","toto" |sc $_ }
$files = get-item c:\temp\*.txt
foreach ($file in $files){(Get-Content $file) | ForEach-Object {$_ -replace 'ur word','new word'} | Out-File $file}
I hope this helps.
Use Get-Childitem to filter for the files you want to modify. Per response to previous question "Powershell, like Windows, uses the extension of the file to determine the filetype."
Also:
You will replace ALL "-" with "" on the first and last lines, using what your example shows, IF you use this instead:
$txt[0] = $txt[0] -replace '-', ''
$txt[$txt.length - 1 ] = $txt[$txt.length - 1 ] -replace '-', ''