19

I believe this is a simple question, but I can't wrap my head around it. I want to do diagnostic commands in command shell on Windows. Like this:

   $cmd =  "ipconfig >> c:\test.txt"

   $message = Invoke-Expression($cmd)

   [String]$message = Get-Content c:\topsecret\testme.txt

Then I want to be able to read the file and keep the formatting and lastly publish it to pastebin via their API. I've tried, but I seem to lose the formatting no matter what I do. Is this possible to do?

Peter Mortensen
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user1310856
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3 Answers3

44

This happens because of your casting. Get-Content returns an object array with a string object per line in the textfile. When you cast it to [string], it joins the objects in the array. The problem is that you don't specify what to join the objects with (e.g. linebreak (backtick)n). 

ipconfig >> test.txt

#Get array of strings. One per line in textfile
$message = Get-Content test.txt

#Get one string-object with linebreaks
$message = (Get-Content test.txt) -join "`n"
Frode F.
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    This didn't work for me. This below did: (Get-Content test.txt) -join [Environment]::NewLine – Jens Jun 19 '15 at 08:48
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    Try `Get-Content test.txt -Raw` if you have PS 3.0+. – Frode F. Apr 06 '18 at 05:27
  • Splitting a file into lines by default is ... an interesting design decision. – usr Jan 07 '22 at 07:28
  • @usr, is it? PowerShell is built around the concept of pipeline and processing as you go. Reading the whole file by default would keep you waiting + using unnecessary memory to load the whole file into memory before being able to do anything with it. There's a reason people like StreamReader in c# :) – Frode F. Jan 07 '22 at 22:17
29

To read all the data as a single string with the line breaks embedded 

$file = 'c:\testfiles\testfile.txt'

(IPconfig /all) > $file

[IO.File]::ReadAllText($file)

If you have V3, they added the -Raw parameter that will accomplish the same thing:

Get-Content $file -Raw
mjolinor
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2

Cast to an array of strings, maybe. Like this, for your last example:

$message = @(Get-Content c:\topsecret\testme.txt)

Or this for the second one:

$message = [string[]](ipconfig)
David Brabant
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