Professional Windows® PowerShell

19.7. Cmdlets for File Actions

There are several cmdlets in Windows PowerShell version 1 that allow you to work with folders and files in the file system.

19.7.1. Using the out-file Cmdlet

The out-file cmdlet allows you to send the output of a command to a file. It is typically used as a step in a pipeline.

In addition to supporting the common parameters the out-file cmdlet supports the following parameters:

• FilePath — Specifies the path to the file where the command output is to be written. This parameter is a required positional parameter in position 1.

• Encoding — Specifies the encoding to be used when writing the file. This parameter is an optional positional parameter in position 2.

• Append — Specifies that data is to be appended to a file. This parameter is a named parameter.

• Width — Specifies how wide the individual lines of output are to be. A named parameter. The default value is 80.

• NoClobber — If present, specifies that an existing file will not be overwritten.

• InputObject — Specifies the input object. An optional parameter.

The following command outputs a table containing the names of running services to a file named RunningServices.txt. Since the file does not exist before the command is run, the file is created.

get-service -ServiceName * |
where-object {$_.status -eq "running"} |
format-table ServiceName, Status |out-file -filePath "C:\Pro PowerShell\Chapter
19\RunningServices.txt"

Figure 19-24 shows part of the content of RunningServices.txt.

Figure 19.24. Figure 19-24 ...