Skip to main content

Working with text in PowerShell



Working with a text file or text format in PowerShell is a good thing to learn.

Getting or monitoring output from PowerShell for further processing or analysis and having it in text file format can easily be imported to other applications.

Working with text or other format, requires these basic operations: Save, Overwrite, Append and Save As.

Save, overwrite, append and save as is a common operation when editing word documents, excel file and other office applications since it’s freely available on the menu of the application. But can we do this in PowerShell? The answer is a resounding, yes.



So, how to do it? Examples below shows how to work with text files in PowerShell and do the operation mentioned above.


Equivalent operations for Save, Overwrite, Append and Save As in PowerShell:

===Set-content ==== will overwrite the file
===Add-content ==== will just add or append something to the file
===Out-File ==== is like "Save As" since you have the option to save the file to another file
===Out-File ==== can also work as “Save” if the file does not exist then it will be created
=== > (redirection operator) === also work as “save” the output can be saved or redirected to a file


Scripting examples:

“Save As” example by saving the file to another file name so the previous file remain untouched.

(Get-Content c:\2018_file.txt) | Foreach-Object {$_ -replace '\[2018\]','[2019]'}  | Out-File 2019_file.txt

2018_file.txt should have this format:
Jan [2018]
Feb [2018]
Mar [2018]

2019_file.txt will have this output:
Jan [2019]
Feb [2019]
Mar [2019]


Appending a text or string to a file:

Add-Content c:\2019_file.txt "Apr [2019]"

The above command will add the string “Apr [2019]” to the end of the file, output will be like this:
Jan [2019]
Feb [2019]
Mar [2019]
Apr [2019]


Overwriting a text file the Set-Content function can be used, example below will overwrite the text file 2019_file.txt

Set-Content -Path d:\2019_file.txt -Value 'Hello, Overwrite World'

Output or the contents of the file will be:
Hello, Overwrite World


Saving the file can be done using the Out-File function or the “>” redirection operator.

Gci d:\*.xml | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Name  > d:\xmlfiles.txt

Above command will search or get all the name of the xml files in D and save the output to xmlfiles.txt

Saving the output file can be done also as:

ls d:\ | % Name | out-file d:\dfiles.txt

Above command will read all files and folders in D drive. Only the file in D it won’t include sub-folders or files in sub-directories.


That’s it. Working with text files in PowerShell is easy and fun.


Cheers! Till next time...


================================
Free Android Apps:

Click  links below to find out more:

Excel Keyboard guide:


Heaven's Dew Fall  Prayer app for Android :



Catholic Rosary Guide  for Android:
Pray the Rosary every day, countless blessings will be showered upon your life if you recite the Rosary faithfully. 
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.myrosaryapp

http://quickbytesstuff.blogspot.sg/2014/09/how-to-recite-rosary.html

Divine Mercy Chaplet Guide (A Powerful prayer) BFF = Be Filled Faith:

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Notepad++ convert multiple lines to a single line and vice versa

Notepad++ is an awesome text editing tool, it can accept regex to process the text data. If the data is in a “.csv” format or comma separated values which is basically just a text file that can either be opened using a text editor, excel or even word. Notepad++ can process the contents of the file using regex. Example if the data has multiple rows or lines, and what is needed is to convert the whole lines of data into a single line. Notepad++ can easily do it using regex. However, if the data is on a single line and it needs to be converted into multiple lines or rows then regex can also be used for this case. Here’s an example on how to convert multiple rows or lines into a single line. Example data: Multiple rows, just a sample data. Press Ctrl+H, and  on "Find what" type: [\r\n]+ and on "Replace with" type with: , (white space) --white space is needed if need to have a space in between the data. See image below, "Regular Expression" must be se
1 comment
Read more

WMIC get computer name

WMIC get computer model, manufacturer, computer name and  username. WMIC is a command-line tool and that can generate information about computer model, its manufacturer, its username and other informations depending on the parameters provided. Why would you need a command line tool if there’s a GUI to check? If you have 20 or 100 computers, or even more. It’s quite a big task just checking the GUI to check the computer model and username. If you have remote computers, you need to delegate someone in the remote office or location to check. Or you can just write a batch file or script to automate the task. Here’s the code below on how get computer model, manufacturer and the username. Open an elevated command prompt and type:     wmic computersystem get "Model","Manufacturer", "Name", "UserName" Just copy and paste the code above, the word “computersystem” does not need to be change to a computer name. A
Post a Comment
Read more

How to check office version from command line

The are quite a few ways to check office version it can be done via registry, PowerShell or VBScript and of course, good old command line can also do it. Checking Windows office version whether it is Office 2010, Office, 2013, Office 2016 or other version is quite important to check compatibility of documents; or just a part of software inventory. For PowerShell this simple snippet can check the office version: $ol = New-Object -ComObject Excel.Application $ol . Version The command line option will tell you where’s the path located; the result will also tell whether office is 32-bit, 64-bit and of course the version of the office as well. Here’s the command that will check the office version and which program directory the file is located which will tell whether it’s 32-bit or 64-bit. Command to search for Excel.exe: DIR C:\ /s excel.exe | find   /i "Directory of"  Above command assumes that program files is on  C: drive. Sample Outpu
Post a Comment
Read more