Powerscript read text file

The above applies to most situations involved with parsing data from files. Get-Content outputs the entire file of logging. This begins to cost us performance, as we deal with larger file sizes. We can select a part of the file by treating our variable object being another name like a SQL query where we select some of the files instead of all of it. In the code below, we select the first five lines of the file, rather than the entire file:.

We can also use the same function to get the last five lines of the file, using a similar syntax:. This makes Get-Content a great basic reader for file data. As we see in the output, we can read all the data from the file like with Get-Content using the ReadToEnd method; how do we read each line of data? Included in the StreamReader class is the ReadLine method and if we called it instead of ReadToEnd , we would get the first line of our files data:.

The ReadLine method reads the current line of the file, which in this case is the first line. Since we told the StreamReader to read the line, it read the first line of the file and stopped. The reason for this is that the ReadLine method only reads the current line in this case, line one.

We must keep reading the file until we reach the end of the file. Reads data from the file associated with the specified file number, which was assigned to the file with the FileOpen function.

FileRead is maintained for backward compatibility. Use the FileReadEx function for new development. The name of the string or blob variable into which you want to read the data. Returns the number of bytes read. If an error occurs, FileRead returns If any argument's value is null, FileRead returns null.

If the file length is greater than 32, bytes, FileRead returns 32, No conversion is needed for UTF files. For Unicode files, the BOM is not written to the string. If the file is read into a blob, FileRead saves the contents of the file with no conversion. Alternate data streams are a feature of the Windows NTFS file system, therefore this does not apply to Get-Content when used with non-Windows operating systems.

You can see alternate data streams by running Get-Item with the Stream parameter. When referencing a file using the Stream parameter, Get-Item returns a property called Stream as shown below.

As shown below, Get-Item displays a single stream. To demonstrate retrieving an alternate data stream using Get-Content , modify a file using Add-Content to add the new stream.

As shown below, the Secret stream content is displayed instead of the default file content. Perhaps you can use Get-Content to determine if a backup file is outdated and trigger an automatic call to run a backup job? Get this interactive comic book to learn how Veeam and AWS can help you fight ransomware, data sprawl, rising cloud costs, unforeseen data loss and make you a hero!

ATA is known for its high-quality written tutorials in the form of blog posts. Adam the Automator. Twitter Facebook LinkedIn. Table of Contents. Retrieving the text file content using PowerShell Get-Content.

Confirming that the text file content is stored as an array. Showing that the indexed items in the string array start at zero index. Returning a specific line from Get-Content results. Reading the top three results using the Get-Content command and the TotalCount parameter.

Getting the results from the end of a file using the Get-Content Tail parameter. Using the wait and Tail parameters with Get-Content. Confirming that the Raw parameter of Get-Content reads the file content as a single string object.

Reading the content of a text file as a single string and replacing a word using the replace operator. Creating test. Listing all available streams in a file using Get-Item. Adding the Secret alternate data stream using Add-Content and displaying the new stream with Get-Item. Using Get-Content to read the Secret alternate data stream content.