How do I filter from plain text output

Question

I'm running wsl -l -v to get a list of WSL VMs on my computer and I get a list like this:

NAME             STATE     VERSION
Ubuntu-18-04     Stopped   2
Ubuntu-20-04     Running   2

I only want to see the ones that are running.
I tried:

wsl -l -v | Select-Object NAME

but I just get a list of blank lines.

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 13 '22 at 05:26

2

just found this in --help docs

wsl -l --running

output:

Windows Subsystem for Linux Distributions:
Ubuntu (Default)

answered Nov 13 '22 at 05:26

X-_-FARZA_ D-_-X

383
1
9

I should have checked `wsl -?`! – abhijit Nov 13 '22 at 05:28
it was under --list -l for me – X-_-FARZA_ D-_-X Nov 13 '22 at 05:30
1

Yes it was. I had missed it! – abhijit Nov 13 '22 at 05:37

NotTheDr01ds · Answer 2 · 2022-11-13T21:12:14.487

While your specific use-case can be handled by wsl --list --running (as mentioned by @X--FARZA_D--X's answer), there are two reasons why your filter wasn't working:

First, you probably were looking for Select-String Running. PowerShell's Select-Object would require a PowerShell object with a NAME property. All wsl.exe provides is a string output.

But more importantly, it still won't work even after the proper:

wsl -l -v | Select-String Running

This is due to a bug in wsl.exe that causes it output as a mangled UTF-16. See this and this answer for details.

Given your use-case, you should be able to properly filter with:

$console = ([console]::OutputEncoding)
[console]::OutputEncoding = New-Object System.Text.UnicodeEncoding
wsl -l -v | Select-String Running
[console]::OutputEncoding = $console

Alternatively, if you are using a recent release of WSL (0.64.0 or later) on Windows 11, you could simply:

$env:WSL_UTF8=1
wsl -l -v | Select-String Running

How do I filter from plain text output

2 Answers2