powershell: `Out-File` with no wrapping and no padding

Question

UPDATE: PSVersion 5.1.19041.610

I'm trying to do what I thought was quite simple: save a file list (including some meta-info) in a text file.

Get-ChildItem | Out-File test.txt

This should do the trick, right?

Unfortunately, every filename that's too long gets wrapped, like following.

Directory: C:\temp\test_file_names


Mode                 LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                 -------------         ------ ----
-a----        03.02.2021     13:16              8 some_very_very_very_very_very_very_very_long_f
                                                  ile_name.file

Using the -Width parameter of Out-File removes the wrapping.

Get-ChildItem | Out-File -Width 300 test.txt

But now every line is padded with spaces to be exactly 300 wide.

Changing $Host.UI.RawUI.BufferSize has the same effect.

Is it possible to somehow get no wrapping and no padding?

Did you want it formatted as a table? Try `Export-Csv` instead of `Out-File`? — antonyoni, Feb 03 '21 at 12:40
I want it in a human-readable form, the default output of Get-ChildItem is actually exactly what I want to see. — Tymur Gubayev, Feb 03 '21 at 12:43
Try `Get-ChildItem | Format-Table -AutoSize`. I think it will wrap very long names into multiple lines though — antonyoni, Feb 03 '21 at 12:50
yeah, it does. It's actually kind of the same output as in my example. — Tymur Gubayev, Feb 03 '21 at 12:53
Ah, `format-table` works with the size of your powershell window... Try `gci | Out-String -Width 4096 | out-file` -> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/8973577/commandline-syntax-to-prevent-wrapping-in-powershell-output-file — antonyoni, Feb 03 '21 at 13:05
There's a difference in how `-width` works between powershell 5 and 7. No padding in 7. `Get-ChildItem | Out-String -Width 4096 | % { $_ -split '\r?\n' | % { $_.trim() } } | out-file` — antonyoni, Feb 03 '21 at 13:14

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 03 '21 at 13:18

1

This seems to be an issue of PS 5 only. Can't reproduce in PS 7.1.

Workaround for PS 5:

Get-ChildItem | Out-String -Width 300 -Stream | %{ $_.TrimEnd() } | Out-File test.txt

Parameter -Stream is used so we process each line separately.

answered Feb 03 '21 at 13:18

zett42

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thanks, that's what I needed. Guess I'll need to upgrade to avoid this kind of headache. – Tymur Gubayev Feb 03 '21 at 13:26
PowerShell v5x and earlier is completely separate environments from PowerShell Core (v6+). There is no upgrade from Powershell 5x to Powershell Core. It's an install PowerShell Core, thus running PowerShell 5x and PowerShell v6+side-by-side. Unless your whole enterprise/organization is PSCore, then you need to deal with whatever PS version(s) are in your environment. – postanote Feb 03 '21 at 18:19

powershell: `Out-File` with no wrapping and no padding

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