I'm running PowerShell v4 and I'm trying to read in a multi-line text file that I want as a single string without line breaks. However, even when I use the -Raw parameter, it is still coming in as an array. It seems like after I put in the -Path the -Raw parameter isn't available anymore because I can't use tab completion for it.
I know there are ways to work around this issue. I'm wondering if anyone has insight into why it isn't working as expected.
Below command works for me:
((Get-Content $file) -join "`n") + "`n" | Set-Content -NoNewline $file
Works for PS v5
Related
I have a fairly simple PS script that was working perfectly, and now has suddenly started giving errors. I have narrowed the problem portion to a couple of Get-Content statements. Here's what the affected part of the script looks like:
$pathSource = "D:\FileDirectory"
Set-Location -Path $pathSource
Get-Content -Encoding UTF8 -Path FilesA*.txt | Out-File -Encoding ASCII FilesA_Digest.txt
Get-Content -Encoding UTF8 -Path FilesB*.txt | Out-File -Encoding ASCII FilesB_Digest.txt
This part of the script gathers up a collection of like-named files and concatenates them into a single text file for uploading to an FTP site. The Get-Content/Out-File was needed as the original files are encoded incorrectly for the FTP site. The script was working perfectly, running once each night for several weeks. Now, it gets the following error when the Get-Content statements are reached:
Get-Content : A parameter cannot be found that matches parameter name 'Encoding'.
At D:\FileDirectory\Script.ps1
Environment is Windows Server 2016. I've tried different variations on the Get-Content parameters, but nothing has worked. I know there is a bug that affects network-mapped drives, but that's not the case here -- all files are local.
Any ideas/suggestions?
The only plausible explanation I can think of is that a custom Get-Content command that lacks an -Encoding parameter is shadowing (overriding) the standard Get-Content cmdlet in the PowerShell session that's executing your script.
To demonstrate:
# Define a custom Get-Content command (function) that accepts only
# a (positional) -Path parameter, not also -Encoding.
function Get-Content { [CmdletBinding()] param([string] $Path) }
# Now try to use Get-Content -Encoding
Get-Content -Encoding Utf8 FilesA*.txt
You'll see the same error message as in your question.
Use Get-Command Get-Content -All to see all commands named Get-Content, with the effective command listed first.
Then examine where any custom commands may come from; e.g., your $PROFILE script may contain one.
To rule out $PROFILE as the culprit, start PowerShell without loading the profile script and examine Get-Content then:
powershell -noprofile # Windows PowerShell
pwsh -noprofile # PowerShell Core
A simple way to rule out custom overrides ad hoc is to call a command by its module-qualified name:
Microsoft.Powershell.Management\Get-Content ...
You can determine a built-in cmdlet's module name of origin as follows:
PS> (Get-Command Get-Content -All)[-1].ModuleName
Microsoft.PowerShell.Management
In a pinch you can also infer the originating module name from the URL of the help topic:
Googling Get-Content will take you to https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/microsoft.powershell.management/get-content - note how the cmdlet's module name, microsoft.powershell.management (case doesn't matter), is the penultimate (next to last) URI component.
It seems an issue with the out command. Can you please try below code :
$pathSource = "D:\FileDirectory"
Set-Location -Path $pathSource
Get-Content -Encoding UTF8 -Path FilesA*.txt | Set-Content -Encoding ASCII -path FilesA_Digest.txt
Get-Content -Encoding UTF8 -Path FilesB*.txt | Set-Content -Encoding ASCII -path FilesB_Digest.txt
Well, I don't know why it failed, but I can say that I have completely re-written the script and now it works. I have to note that, given the errors that were occurring, I also don't know why it is now working.
I am using the exact same calls to the Get-Content commandlet, with the -Encoding parameter and the pipe to Out-File with its own -Encoding parameter. I am doing the exact same actions as the previous version of the script. The only part that is significantly different is the portion that performs the FTP transfer of the processed files. I'm now using only PowerShell to perform the transfer rather than CuteFTP and it all seems to be working correctly.
Thanks to everyone who contributed.
Cheers
Norm
Not sure if it helps, but I was running into the same with:
$n = ni '[hi]' -value 'some text'
gc $n -Encoding Byte
$f = ls *hi*
$f.where{$_.name -eq '[hi]'}.Delete()
also looks like there's already a chain of SOs about this known bug see this answer
I am writing a powershell script to edit multiple text files. All the text files have a line like so
serverUrl=http://localhost:1234
The last 4 numbers vary in each file, but I need to change them all to 9090. I had tried using powershell wildcards like so:
foreach ($file in $files) {
(Get-Content $file).replace('serverUrl=http\://localhost\:????', 'serverUrl=http\://localhost\:9090') | Set-Content $file
}
But these didn't work unfortunately. Is there any way to do this? Thank you
Use the -replace regex operator instead of the String.Replace() method:
(Get-Content $file) -replace 'serverUrl=http://localhost:\d{4}','serverUrl=http://localhost:9080'
Using powershell, I want to take a .bat file and replace all lines in which set is called to set an environment variable and change it to a corresponding setx call. Unfortunately it's not as simple as just doing a search and replace on the file, replacing set for setx, because the syntax is diffferent: set ENVNAME=abc vs setx ENVNAME abc.
Is there a simple way to do this in powershell? To just do the set for setx replacement, I have:
(Get-Content $orig_filename ) | ForEach-Object {$_ -replace "set", "setx"} | Set-Content $new_filename
Any pointers for a powershell novice would be appreciated.
Did some pretty limited testing and I'm not sure what your bat file looks like, but this may work for you.
(Get-Content $orig_filename ) | ForEach-Object {
$_ -replace 'set (.*)\=(.*)','setx $1 $2'
} | Set-Content $new_filename
You could also just chain another -replace to do the work for you. Also made the set > setx replacement a little more less error prone by ensuring you are replacing the word set at the beginning of the string. Since -replace functions as an array operator you do not need the foreach loop.
(Get-Content $orig_filename ) -replace "^set\b", "setx" -replace "="," " | Set-Content $new_filename
I have a text file containing names of people seperated by . how to replace the . with new lines so that each name is in new line with powershell
If you have the latest version of PSCX (3.2.0) http://pscx.codeplex.com, we just added a new command to simplify this type of task a bit:
Edit-File -Path c:\path\to\file.txt -Pattern '\.' -Replacement "`r`n"
Or using positional params:
Edit-File c:\path\to\file.txt '\.' "`r`n"
This command also handles taking care that the file's original encoding is preserved. Using Out-File will output using Unicode unless you override with the -Encoding parameter which of course requires that you know the file's encoding in the first place. :-)
You can do a simple replace...
(gc c:\path\to\file.txt) -replace "\.","`n" | out-file c:\path\to\newfile.txt
I am trying to replicate the functionality of the cat command in Unix.
I would like to avoid solutions where I explicitly read both files into variables, concatenate the variables together, and then write out the concatenated variable.
Simply use the Get-Content and Set-Content cmdlets:
Get-Content inputFile1.txt, inputFile2.txt | Set-Content joinedFile.txt
You can concatenate more than two files with this style, too.
If the source files are named similarly, you can use wildcards:
Get-Content inputFile*.txt | Set-Content joinedFile.txt
Note 1: PowerShell 5 and older versions allowed this to be done more concisely using the aliases cat and sc for Get-Content and Set-Content respectively. However, these aliases are problematic because cat is a system command in *nix systems, and sc is a system command in Windows systems - therefore using them is not recommended, and in fact sc is no longer even defined as of PowerShell Core (v7). The PowerShell team recommends against using aliases in general.
Note 2: Be careful with wildcards - if you try to output to inputFiles.txt (or similar that matches the pattern), PowerShell will get into an infinite loop! (I just tested this.)
Note 3: Outputting to a file with > does not preserve character encoding! This is why using Set-Content is recommended.
Do not use >; it messes up the character encoding. Use:
Get-Content files.* | Set-Content newfile.file
In cmd, you can do this:
copy one.txt+two.txt+three.txt four.txt
In PowerShell this would be:
cmd /c copy one.txt+two.txt+three.txt four.txt
While the PowerShell way would be to use gc, the above will be pretty fast, especially for large files. And it can be used on on non-ASCII files too using the /B switch.
You could use the Add-Content cmdlet. Maybe it is a little faster than the other solutions, because I don't retrieve the content of the first file.
gc .\file2.txt| Add-Content -Path .\file1.txt
To concat files in command prompt it would be
type file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt > files.txt
PowerShell converts the type command to Get-Content, which means you will get an error when using the type command in PowerShell because the Get-Content command requires a comma separating the files. The same command in PowerShell would be
Get-Content file1.txt,file2.txt,file3.txt | Set-Content files.txt
I used:
Get-Content c:\FileToAppend_*.log | Out-File -FilePath C:\DestinationFile.log
-Encoding ASCII -Append
This appended fine. I added the ASCII encoding to remove the nul characters Notepad++ was showing without the explicit encoding.
If you need to order the files by specific parameter (e.g. date time):
gci *.log | sort LastWriteTime | % {$(Get-Content $_)} | Set-Content result.log
You can do something like:
get-content input_file1 > output_file
get-content input_file2 >> output_file
Where > is an alias for "out-file", and >> is an alias for "out-file -append".
Since most of the other replies often get the formatting wrong (due to the piping), the safest thing to do is as follows:
add-content $YourMasterFile -value (get-content $SomeAdditionalFile)
I know you wanted to avoid reading the content of $SomeAdditionalFile into a variable, but in order to save for example your newline formatting i do not think there is proper way to do it without.
A workaround would be to loop through your $SomeAdditionalFile line by line and piping that into your $YourMasterFile. However this is overly resource intensive.
To keep encoding and line endings:
Get-Content files.* -Raw | Set-Content newfile.file -NoNewline
Note: AFAIR, whose parameters aren't supported by old Powershells (<3? <4?)
I think the "powershell way" could be :
set-content destination.log -value (get-content c:\FileToAppend_*.log )