Inconsistency in Write-Output "$obj" and directly printing $obj in Powershell

Question

This is the dummy.json file

{
    "key1":"value1",
    "key2":"value2"
}

I'm reading the contents of this file to a variable and outputting them

C:> $obj = Get-Content .\dummy.json
C:> $obj
{
        "key1":"value1",
        "key2":"value2"
}
C:> Write-Host "$obj"
{       "key1":"value1",        "key2":"value2" }

I know that Get-Content doesn't preserve the line breaks and joins it by " ". Powershell keep text formatting when reading in a file

But why is there an inconsistency in the above 2 outputs ? I guess Write-Host is doing its job correctly. Or am I wrong ?

Hi, what about `Write-Host $obj` ? – sodawillow Sep 22 '16 at 11:51 — sodawillow, Sep 22 '16 at 11:51
@sodawillow Yeah works, got it. – Srinath Mandava Sep 22 '16 at 11:54 — Srinath Mandava, Sep 22 '16 at 11:54

Ansgar Wiechers · Accepted Answer · 2016-09-22T11:58:20.710

3

It's not Get-Content that joins the lines (its output is an array of strings), but you putting the variable in double quotes ("$obj"). You can avoid that by joining the lines yourself:

Write-Host ($obj -join "`n")
Write-Host ($obj | Out-String)
Write-Host $($OFS="`n"; "$obj")

Another option would be to read the file directly as a single string, e.g. like this (requires PowerShell v3 or newer):

$obj = Get-Content .\dummy.json -Raw

or like this:

$obj = [IO.File]::ReadAllText('.\dummy.json')

edited Sep 22 '16 at 11:58

answered Sep 22 '16 at 11:51

Ansgar Wiechers

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Cool, got it. So, my understanding of Get-Content and Write-Host was wrong. Thanks :) – Srinath Mandava Sep 22 '16 at 11:55

Inconsistency in Write-Output "$obj" and directly printing $obj in Powershell

1 Answers1