Replacing a text at specified line number of a file using powershell

Question

IF there is one file for example test.config , this file contain work "WARN" between line 140 and 170 , there are other lines where "WARN" word is there , but I want to replace "WARN" between line 140 and 170 with word "DEBUG", and keep the remaining text of the file same and when saved the "WARN" is replaced by "DEBUG" between only lines 140 and 170 . remaining all text is unaffected.

score 8 · Answer 1 · answered May 18 '11 at 07:47

8

Look at $_.ReadCount which will help. Just as a example I replace only rows 10-15.

$content = Get-Content c:\test.txt
$content | 
  ForEach-Object { 
    if ($_.ReadCount -ge 10 -and $_.ReadCount -le 15) { 
      $_ -replace '\w+','replaced' 
    } else { 
      $_ 
    } 
  } | 
  Set-Content c:\test.txt

After that, the file will contain:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
replaced
replaced
replaced
replaced
replaced
replaced
16
17
18
19
20

answered May 18 '11 at 07:47

stej

28,745
11
71
104

I think I saw that first in some comment/post/tweet by @ShayLevy. – stej May 18 '11 at 19:26
Stej your answer worked perfectly and it is excatly what I need – Janki May 19 '11 at 00:03
@Janki, nice to hear that in the morning :) If it works, you may accept the answer. – stej May 19 '11 at 04:17

WayneC · Answer 2 · 2015-11-24T17:01:07.130

3

2 Lines:

$FileContent = Get-Content "C:\Some\Path\textfile.txt"
$FileContent | % { If ($_.ReadCount -ge 140 -and $_.ReadCount -le 170) {$_ -Replace "WARN","DEBUG"} Else {$_} } | Set-Content -Path "C:\Some\Path\textfile.txt"

Description:

Write content of text file to array "$FileContent"
Pipe $FileContent array to For-EachObject cmdlet "%"
- For each item in array, check Line number ($_.ReadCount)
- If Line number 140-170, Replace WARN with DEBUG; otherwise write line unmodified.
- NOTE: You MUST add the "Else {$_}". Otherwise the text file will only contain the modified lines.
- Set-Content to write the content to text file

edited Nov 24 '15 at 17:01

answered Nov 24 '15 at 15:44

WayneC

123
3

Please add a short explanation to your answer. – Mr Mush Nov 24 '15 at 16:03
Explanation provided in Description section – WayneC Dec 04 '20 at 21:34

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered May 18 '11 at 10:12

2

Using array slicing:

$content = Get-Content c:\test.txt

$out = @()
$out += $content[0..139]
$out += $content[140..168]  -replace "warn","DEBUG"
$out += $content[169..($content.count -1)]
$out | out-file out.txt

answered May 18 '11 at 10:12

mjolinor

66,130
7
114
135

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 06 '13 at 01:10

So my script is pretty similar, so I am going to post what I ended up doing.

I had a bunch of servers all with the same script in the same location, and I needed to updated a path in all of the scripts.

i just replaced the entire line (line 3 in this script) and rewrote the script back out

my server names and "paths" to replace the old path were stored in an array (you could pull that from a DB if you wanted to automated it more:

$servers = @("Server1","Server2")
$Paths = @("\\NASSHARE\SERVER1\Databackups","\\NASSHARE\SERVER2\Databackups")
$a = 0

foreach ($x in $servers)
{
$dest = "\\" + $x + "\e$\Powershell\Backup.ps1"
$newline = '$backupNASPath = "' + $Paths[$a] + '"'
$lines = @(Get-Content $dest)
$lines[3] = $newline
$lines > $dest
$a++
}

it works, and saved me a ton of time logging into each server and updating each path. ugh

Cheers

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered May 18 '11 at 06:59

0

This is the test file

text
text
DEBUG

DEBUG


TEXT

--

PS:\ gc .\stuff1.txt |% { [system.text.regularexpressions.regex]::replace($_,"WARN","DEBUG") }  > out.txt

Out.txt look like this

text text DEBUG

DEBUG

TEXT

answered May 18 '11 at 06:59

rerun

25,014
6
48
78

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered May 18 '11 at 07:47

Might be trivial but it does the job:

$content = gc "D:\posh\stack\test.txt"

$start=139
$end=169

$content | % {$i=0;$lines=@();}{
  if($i -ge $start -and $i -le $end){
   $lines+=$_ -replace 'WARN', 'DEBUG'
   }
  else
  {
    $lines+=$_
  }
  $i+=1
 }{set-content test_output.txt $lines}

Replacing a text at specified line number of a file using powershell

6 Answers6

Linked