Replacing bunch of string characters in a text file using Powershell - powershell

Question

Working on a PowerShell code which will replace a set of characters from a text file in a folder (Contain lot of Text files). Is there a way where it can do it for all the files in the folder?
The issue is it creates a new file when I run the code (New_NOV_1995.txt) but it doesn't change any characters in the new file.
$lookupTable = #{
'¿' = '|'
'Ù' = '|'
'À' = '|'
'Ú' = '|'
'³' = '|'
'Ä' = '-'
}
$original_file = 'C:\FilePath\NOV_1995.txt'
$destination_file = 'C:\FilePath\NOV_1995_NEW.txt'
Get-Content -Path $original_file | ForEach-Object {
$line = $_
$lookupTable.GetEnumerator() | ForEach-Object {
if ($line -match $_.Key)
{
$line = $line -replace $_.Key, $_.Value
}
}
$line
} | Set-Content -Path $destination_file

Answer 1

While something like this would work, performance might be a problem. My only testing was on a tiny file containing the $lookupTable.
$lookupTable = #{
'¿' = '|'
'Ù' = '|'
'À' = '|'
'Ú' = '|'
'³' = '|'
'Ä' = '-'
}
$original_file = 'C:\FilePath\NOV_1995.txt'
$destination_file = 'C:\FilePath\NOV_1995_NEW.txt'
$originalContent = Get-Content -Path $original_file
$lookupTable.GetEnumerator() | % {
$originalContent = $originalContent -replace $_.Key,$_.Value
}
$originalContent | Out-File -FilePath $destination_file

Answer 2

Your code as you have it there is actually working for me. There is still a possible encoding issue maybe with your files. Does your file look right when you just read it into the console with Get-Content $path? If the file does not look right you might need to play with the -Encoding switches of the
Set-Content and Get-Contentcmdlets.
Improving on your current logic.
I changed your $lookuptable to a pair of psobjects. Since you are making the same replacement for the most part I combined them into a single regex.
The next part I hummed and hawed about but since, after my proposed change, you are only doing two replacements I figure you could just chain the two into a single replacement line. Otherwise you could have a foreach-object in there but I think this is simpler and faster.
This way we don't need to test for a match. -replace is doing the testing for us.
$toPipe = [pscustomobject]#{
Pattern = '¿|Ù|À|Ú|³'
Replacement = "|"
}
$toHypen = [pscustomobject]#{
Pattern = 'Ä'
Replacement = "-"
}
$path = "c:\temp\test\test"
Get-ChildItem -Path $path | ForEach-Object{
(Get-Content $_.FullName) -replace $toPipe.Pattern,$toPipe.Replacement -replace $toHypen.Pattern,$toHypen.Replacement |
Set-Content $_.FullName
}
Note that this will change the original files. Testing is encouraged.
Set-Content and Get-Content are not the best when it comes to performance so you might need to consider using [IO.File]::ReadAllLines($file) and its partner static method [IO.File]::WriteAllLines($file)