Powershell replace adding an empty line

Question

I have this powershell code which should replace every occurrence of a string in every file in the directory with a new string. This works, however an empty line is added in the end. What causes this, and how can this be nicely avoided?

$files = Get-ChildItem $currentDir *.* -recurse
foreach ($file in $files)
    {
    $find = "placeholder"
    $replace = "newvalue"
    $content = Get-Content $($file.FullName) -Raw
    $content -replace $find,$replace | Out-File $($file.FullName) 
    }

Simply removing the last line is not a good solution since sometimes my files will contain an empty line which I want to keep.

All files are in Unicode? – Jean-Claude Colette Aug 03 '17 at 15:54 — Jean-Claude Colette, Aug 03 '17 at 15:54
It's out-file that adds a newline, not -replace – Mathias R. Jessen Aug 03 '17 at 16:05 — Mathias R. Jessen, Aug 03 '17 at 16:05

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 03 '17 at 16:08

3

You could use the -NoNewline parameter to prevent Out-File from appending the extra line at the end of the file.

$content -replace $find,$replace | Out-File $($file.FullName) -NoNewline

Note: this was added in PowerShell 5.0

answered Aug 03 '17 at 16:08

BenH

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1

For prior versions of PowerShell you might consider using `Set-Content` or `Add-Content` but mind the differences with `Out-File`: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10655788/powershell-set-content-and-out-file-what-is-the-difference – iRon Aug 03 '17 at 18:49
I put my version in a comment, so that the formatting looks better. I am still limited to PS version 4. – Houbie Aug 04 '17 at 08:19

Houbie · Answer 2 · 2017-08-14T09:24:07.520

I am limited to PS version 4, and this is what I used

$files = Get-ChildItem $currentDir . -recurse

$find = "placeholder"
$replace = ""newvalue"    

foreach ($file in $files)
    {
    $content = Get-Content $($file.FullName) -Raw | ForEach-Object { $_ -replace $find,$replace}
    $content = $content -join "`r`n"

    $content | Set-Content  $($file.FullName)      
    }

Note that this only works if it is ok to store the complete file in memory.

Powershell replace adding an empty line

2 Answers2