I use findstr to recursively search several large directories for any lines that match any of the lines in searchList.txt.
findstr /SNIP /D:"C:\search Dir1;C:\search Dir2" /G:C:\searchList.txt *
I want to do the same thing in a Powershell script, either by calling the findstr command or doing something entirely in Powershell. Iterating over each item in searchList.txt and then looking in all the directories is too slow.
How do I call the above line in Powershell, or do the equivalent?
Thanks in advance.
You can call it in PowerShell by opening a PowerShell prompt, typing it in, and hitting [ENTER].
I don't see anything preventing you from running that command from PowerShell. findstr is not a native cmd command, it's a standalone .exe file bundled with Windows and located in the default system path (the System32 directory), so it's available from PowerShell.
You could do it in native PowerShell, but that would be an unnecessary headache. You'd have to do something like this
echo 'C:\search Dir1' 'C:\search Dir2' | Get-ChildItem | Select-String ((Get-Content C:\searchlist.txt) -join '|')
but excluding binary files would be a pain, because AFAIK there's no built-in way to check whether a file is text or binary. If you can rely on the extension, you could add -Filter *.txt after Get-ChildItem.
Bottom line: It's not worth it. Select-String is more versatile in terms of matching patterns, because you can use .NET regular expressions, but if the patterns you want to find are within findstr's limited regex capabilities, you're better off using findstr for this task, and your scripts will be portable because it's always included in Windows.
Related
In the older Windows command prompt dir /w formatted the directory output in wide format, providing a more at-a-glance view of contents to pick out folder names without having to scroll through the larger output that happens when they are all stacked vertically. This is especially useful when in VS Codes integrated terminal where the terminal window size is often restricted. Does PowerShell have an equivilent?
are you after this?
Get-ChildItem | Select-Object -Property Name
It should be an equivalent of "dir /w". If I remember correctly.
cmd /r dir /w as suggested by DSSO21 in the Comments above gives me the result I was expecting, albeit a more verbose command than I'd like.
i'm trying to use text that is inside the clipboard inside a powershell script. So what the purpose for the script, i want to be able to copy a file directory and then run the script so it uses the copied directory as a automatic destination. So my idea was to do something like this:
Copy-Item C:\Users\gif.gif -Destination "Copied Directory"
I'm very new to powershell scripting, so an explenation of what is going on would be nice but not needed. I origionlly thought that this could work but nope XD, this should have been a simple project but yeah it wasn't meant to be easy.
Copy-Item C:\Users\J.J\Documents\TouchPortal/Make_30fps_gif.bat -Destination | Get-Clipboard
Would love to get some help with this, and thank you in advance!
To complement Steven's helpful answer:
In Windows PowerShell only, you can use Get-Clipboard's -Format parameter to request clipboard data other than text.
In PowerShell [Core, v6+], this is no longer supported, and text is indeed the only data type supported by Get-Clipboard.
In Windows PowerShell, if you've used File Explorer to copy a directory to the clipboard (using the regular Copy shortcut-menu command or the Ctrl+C keyboard shortcut), you can access it as System.IO.DirectoryInfo instance by passing -Format FileDropList to Get-Clipboard.
Note: -Format FileDropList returns a collection of file-system-info objects, so as to also support multiple files/directories having been copied to the clipboard; thanks to member-access enumeration, however, you can treat this collection like a single object - assuming truly only one file or directory was copied.
# Note: Windows PowerShell only.
# The .FullName property returns the full directory path.
Copy-Item C:\Users\gif.gif -Destination (Get-Clipboard -Format FileDropList).FullName
In PowerShell [Core, v6+] you'll indeed have to use the Shift+right-click method and select Copy as path from the shortcut menu, in order to ensure that a file/directory is copied as a (double-quoted, full) path string, as shown in Steven's answer.
In PowerShell core including versions 6 & 7 Get-Clipboard only works with text. If you use it after copying a folder it will return null.
In PowerShell 5.1 (Windows PowerShell) you can use the -Format parameter with Get-Clipboard
See mklement0's answer for a better description and example using -Format.
If you need to use the newer versions, you can use the shift + context menu choice > Copy as Path to get the folder's string path on to the clipboard, but that will quote the path. The quoted path will then be rejected by Copy-Item.
However, you could quickly replace the quotes like below.
Copy-Item 'C:\temp\BaseFile.txt' -Destination (Get-Clipboard).Replace('"',"")
Caution though, this seems hazardous and I wouldn't advise it. I use Get-Clipboard all the time to get data into a console session and can attest that it's too easy to make mistakes. The clipboard is so transient and it's use so ubiquitous that even if you make this work it's bound to burn you at some point.
Maybe you can elaborate on what you're trying to do and why. Then we can brainstorm the best approach.
I have this function:
function traced()
{
write-host "$args"
invoke-expression -Command "$args"
}
and I use it in several places like traced cp "$($_.FullName)" (join-path $directory $newfile) so that I have a log of all of the places that get copied (or removed, or whatever)
But when the directory contains spaces and dashes, it results in invoke-expression throwing.
I guess I could just define traced-cp and traced-rm, but if I have a lot of functions I want to trace, what's the generic answer? I just want a function that prints, then evaluates, the exact command its given. From what I understand, the & operator isn't what I want here-- It won't work for shell builtins.
[...] so that I have a log of all of the places that get copied (or removed, or whatever)
I'd strongly recommend you use transcript logging for this!
You can start a transcript interactively with the Start-Transcript cmdlet, but if you want to keep a transcript of every single instance of PowerShell you launch by default, I'd suggest turning it on by default!
Open the local policy editor (gpedit.msc) on your Windows box and navigate to:
Computer Configuration
> Administrative Templates
> Windows Components
> Windows PowerShell
Select the policy setting named "Turn on PowerShell Transcription", set it to Enabled, and optionally configure your preferred output directory (defaults to your home folder).
This way, you'll always have a full transcript of your interactions in PowerShell :)
Consider using argument splatting to build your command instead of building a string-based command with Invoke-Expression. I also don't know where you heard that & doesn't work with shell built-ins but it works with both commands and cmdlets.
Here is the official Microsoft documentation on splatting in Powershell.
This approach also eliminates the difficulty in crafting a command string correctly, having to escape characters, and dealing with path spaces - using splatting with named or positional arguments takes care of most of this for you.
I would suggest using -verbose with copy-item or remove-item, and also -passthru with copy-item.
I'm wondering how can I escape the following command from PowerShell so that it works?
PS C:\Users\buster\Documents\> find -name \*.c
PowerShell says: error not found *.c
PS C:\Users\buster\Documents\> find -name *.c
PowerShell says: error not found *.c
If you used find like that (without the full path) you most likely used the find.exe that ships with Windows (C:\Windows\system32\find.exe), which is more akin to grep than to Unix find. You get that behavior because Windows searches all directories in $env:PATH for files with the given name (and one of the extensions listed in $env:PATHEXT if no extension was specified), and executes the first match. Since %windir%\system32 is usually at the beginning of the PATH, executables from there take precedence.
You could add C:\msys64\msys64\usr\bin to the beginning of the PATH (before %windir%\system32), although I wouldn't recommend that. A better way would be to define an alias for the command:
New-Alias -Name 'find' -Value 'C:\msys64\msys64\usr\bin\find.exe'
Aliases take precedence over files. You could put the alias definition in your PowerShell profile so that it's automatically loaded whenever you start PowerShell.
Or you could simply use ls -r -fi '*.c' (short for Get-ChildItem -Recurse -Filter '*.c'), which would be the PowerShell way.
Ok false alarm..
Apparently its a case of windows having an executable with the same name as msys2's find.exe under c:\windows\system32 and the windows command getting higher priority in the path list. After explicitly typing out the full path to the msys64 version of find.exe it works.
PS C:\Users\buster\Documents\> C:\msys64\msys64\usr\bin\find -name \*.c
Also, Turns out there's a better way to find *.c files native to cmd.exe that you can call from powershell like this:
PS C:\Users\buster\Documents\> cmd /c dir /S /B *.v
I want to execute the following from a batch file:
"C:\OpenCover\tools\OpenCover.Console.exe" -register:user -target:"%VS110COMNTOOLS%..\IDE\mstest.exe" -targetargs:"/testcontainer:\"C:\Develop\bin\Debug\MyUnitTests.dll\" ... "
PAUSE
Now I would like to log the output of the process to a file for which I came across the quite handy powershell usage of
powershell "dir | tee output.log"
but this does not take my batch file as first argument (powershell "my.bat | tee output.log") because it is not the name of a cmdlet or a function or a script file.
I could change my batch file so that is says powershell "OpenCover.Console.exe..." but I would have to adapt all quotes and change escape characters and so forth.
Is there a way to make a batch file execute in powershell? Or is there a way to drop in my line unchanged from the batch after some powershell command and it all executes "like it ought to"?
Unless your batch file is in a folder in the %PATH%, PowerShell won't find it [1], so you'll have to supply an explicit file path (whether relative or absolute).
For instance, if the batch file is in the current folder, run:
powershell -c ".\my.bat | tee output.log"
Consider adding -noprofile to suppress loading of the profile files, which is typically only needed in interactive sessions.
If your batch file path contains embedded spaces, enclose it in single quotes and prepend &:
powershell -c "& '.\my script.bat' | tee output.log"
Note: I've deliberately added the -c (short for: -Command) parameter name above; while powershell.exe - Windows PowerShell - defaults to this parameter, that is no longer true in PowerShell [Core] v6+ (whose executable name is pwsh), where -File is now the default - see about_PowerShell.exe and about_pwsh
[1] More accurately, PowerShell - unlike cmd.exe - will by design not execute scripts in the current folder by their mere filename (in an interactive PowerShell session you'll get a hint to that effect). This is a security feature designed to prevent accidental invocation of a different executable than intended.
Unless you have some purpose for doing so not stated in the OP, there isn't a reason to use both Powershell and a batch script. If you want to do this solely from PS, you can create a PS script that does everything the batch file does.
To avoid the escaping issues (or alternatively to take advantage of CMD.EXE's somewhat strange escaping behavior :-) you can use --%, introduced in PS 3.0. It is documented under about_escape_characters.