PowerShell Cookbook, 4th Edition

Chapter 9. Simple Files

9.0 Introduction

When administering a system, you naturally spend a significant amount of time working with the files on that system. Many of the things you want to do with these files are simple: get their content, search them for a pattern, or replace text inside them.

For even these simple operations, PowerShell’s object-oriented flavor adds several unique and powerful twists.

9.1 Get the Content of a File

Problem

You want to get the content of a file.

Solution

Provide the filename as an argument to the Get-Content cmdlet:

PS > $content = Get-Content c:\temp\file.txt

Place the filename in a ${} section to use the cmdlet Get-Content variable syntax:

PS > $content = ${c:\temp\file.txt}

Provide the filename as an argument to the ReadAllLines() or ReadAllText() methods to use the System.IO.File class from the .NET Framework:

PS > $content = Get-Content c:\temp\file.txt -Raw
PS > $contentLines = [System.IO.File]::ReadAllLines("c:\temp\file.txt")

Discussion

PowerShell offers three primary ways to get the content of a file. The first is the Get-Content cmdlet—the cmdlet designed for this purpose. In fact, the Get-Content cmdlet works on any PowerShell drive that supports the concept of items with content. This includes Alias:, Function:, and more. The second and third ways are the Get-Content variable syntax and the ReadAllText() method.

When working against files, the Get-Content cmdlet returns the content of the file line by line. When it does ...