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
Related
I am getting input like s1,s2,s3,s4.i am writing it to file.
Tried below way :
$ServerList = Get-Content "D:\ServerName.txt"
Clear-Content -Path "D:\ServerName.txt"
[IO.File]::ReadAllText($ServerList) -replace ',',"`r`n" | Out-File "D:\ServerName.txt"
But it is not writing anything.
It should replace comma with newline to bring each server in new line.
Please let me know where i am doing wrong.
This oneliner is working for me:
(Get-Content "Path\test.txt") -replace ',',"`r`n" | Out-File "Path\test.txt"
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.
What would be the command to remove everything after a string (\test.something).
I have information in a text file, but after the string there is like a 1000 lines of text that I don't want. how can I remove everything after and including the string.
This is what I have - not working. Thank you so much.
$file = get-item "C:\Temp\test.txt"
(Get-Content $file) | ForEach {$_.TrimEnd("\test.something\")} | Set-Content $file
Why remove everything after? Just keep everything up to it (I'm going to use two lines for readability but you can easily combine into single command):
$text = ( Get-Content test.txt | Out-String ).Trim()
#Note V3 can just use Get-Content test.txt -raw
$text.Substring(0,$text.IndexOf('\test.something\')) | Set-Content file2.txt
Also, you may not need the Trim but you were using TrimEnd so added in case you want to add it later. )
Using -replace
(Get-Content $file -Raw) -replace '(?s)\\test\.something\\.+' | Set-Content $file
I have a log file with ^M embedded throughout. I would like to replace the ^M with a single space.
I have tried variations on this:
(Get-Content C:\temp\send.log) | Foreach-Object {$_ -replace "^M", ' '} | Set-Content C:\temp\send.out
The output file contains a newline where each ^M had been, not at all what I was looking for...
The problem I am trying to solve involves examining the last $cnt lines of the file:
$new = Get-Content $fn | Select-Object -Last $cnt;
$new
When I display $new, the ^M are interpreted as CR/LF.
How can I remove/replace the ^M? Thanks for any pointers....
Sounds like ^M is not being replaced by your -replace method, it's likely the replace method is trying to replace capital letter M at the beginning of the string (^). Upon opening the file, ^M is then being interpreted as a carriage return.
Perhaps try replacing the carriage returns (^M) before displaying the contents:
(Get-Content C:\temp\send.log) |
Foreach-Object {$_ -replace "`r", ' '} |
Set-Content C:\temp\send.out
or
$new = Get-Content $fn | Select-Object -Last $cnt;
$new.replace("`r"," ")
Could this be as simple as escaping the ^ character? If you only need the last $count lines of the file you can use the -Tail parameter on Get-Content. Depending if you need to match ^M as case sensitive you might opt for -creplace instead of -replace.
Get-Content $inputfile -Tail $count | ForEach-Object { $_ -creplace '\^m',' ' } | Set-Content $outputfile
This isn't an answer, but since you asked for a few pointers, this might help set things straight.
Try this:
$new = Get-Content $fn | Select-Object -Last $cnt;
$new
$new.gettype()
$new[0].gettype()
I expect you're going to see that $new is an array of objects, and that $new[0] is a string. I'm going to suggest that $new[0] doesn't contain CR or LF or CRLF or anything like that. And I'm going to suggest that, when you ask for the display of $new in its entirety, what you are getting is each string ($new[0] followed by $new[1] ...) with CRLF inserted as a separator.
If I'm right, replacing CR or CRLF with space isn't going to do you any good at all. It's the CRLFs that are being inserted on output to a file that are preventing you from succeeding.
This is as far as I got towards solving your problem.
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 '-', ''