Multi-Line String to Single-Line String conversion in PowerShell - string

I have a text file that has multiple 'chunks' of text. These chunks have multiple lines and are separated with a blank line, e.g.:
This is an example line
This is an example line
This is an example line
This is another example line
This is another example line
This is another example line
I need these chunks to be in single-line format e.g.
This is an example lineThis is an example lineThis is an example line
This is another example lineThis is another example lineThis is another example line
I have researched this thoroughly and have only found ways of making whole text files single-line. I need a way (preferably in a loop) of making an array of string chunks single-line. Is there any way of achieving this?
EDIT:
I have edited the example content to make it a little clearer.

# create a temp file that looks like your content
# add the A,B,C,etc to each line so we can see them being joined later
"Axxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Bxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Dxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Exxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Fxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Gxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Ixxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" | Set-Content -Path "$($env:TEMP)\JoinChunks.txt"
# read the file content as one big chunk of text (rather than an array of lines
$textChunk = Get-Content -Path "$($env:TEMP)\JoinChunks.txt" -Raw
# split the text into an array of lines
# the regex "(\r*\n){2,}" means 'split the whole text into an array where there are two or more linefeeds
$chunksToJoin = $textChunk -split "(\r*\n){2,}"
# remove linefeeds for each section and output the contents
$chunksToJoin -replace '\r*\n', ''
# one line equivalent of above
((Get-Content -Path "$($env:TEMP)\JoinChunks.txt" -Raw) -split "(\r*\n){2,}") -replace '\r*\n', ''

A bit of a fudge:
[String] $strText = [System.IO.File]::ReadAllText( "c:\temp\test.txt" );
[String[]] $arrLines = ($strText -split "`r`n`r`n").replace("`r`n", "" );
This relies on the file having Windows CRLFs.

There a several ways to approach a task like that. One is to use a regular expression replacement with a negative lookahead assertion:
(Get-Content 'C:\path\to\input.txt' | Out-String) -replace "`r?`n(?!`r?`n)" |
Set-Content 'C:\path\to\output.txt'
You could also work with a StreamReader and StreamWriter:
$reader = New-Object IO.StreamReader 'C:\path\to\input.txt'
$writer = New-Object IO.StreamWriter 'C:\path\to\output.txt'
while ($reader.Peek() -gt 0) {
$line = $reader.ReadLine()
if ($line.Trim() -ne '') {
$writer.Write($line)
} else {
$writer.WriteLine()
}
}

Related

Powershell multiple string replacement using while cycle

I am trying to solve a somewhat weird problem: I need to replace strings within a raw content by strings from the same content that meet a certain matching criteria. The input data look like this:
apple-beta
apple-alpha_orange-beta
apple-alpha_orange-alpha_cherry-beta
apple-alpha_orange-alpha_kiwi-beta
apple-alpha_orange-alpha_mango-beta
abcd-alpha_efgh-beta
abcd-alpha_efgh-alpha_ijkl-beta
abcd-alpha_efgh-alpha_mnop-beta
The replacment should work as follows: look for all "-beta" strings in the content and delete all according "-alpha" strings (eg because there is "orange-beta" already => all "orange-alpha" should be deleted, because there is "apple-beta" already => all "apple-alpha" should be deleted etc.). The result would look like this:
apple-beta
_orange-beta
__cherry-beta
__kiwi-beta
__mango-beta
abcd-alpha_efgh-beta
abcd-alpha__ijkl-beta
abcd-alpha__mnop-beta
I have tried to achieve this with a number of awkward single replacements and temporary file storages as well as with a while-construction that doesn't work at all:
$whileinput = get-content -raw C:\content-input.txt
while ($whileinput -match "\w+-beta") {
$fullval = $whileinput -match "\w+-beta" -replace "-beta","-alpha"
$whileinput = $whileinput -replace '$fullval',''
}
Any help is very appreciated!
Daniel
I would find all your beta items. Then replace the corresponding alpha items.
$data = Get-Content C:\content-input.txt
$betas = ([regex]::Matches($data,'[^_]*?(?=-beta)').Value -ne '' | Foreach-Object {
[regex]::Escape($_)} ) -join '|'
$data -replace "($betas)-alpha"
Explanation:
[regex]::Matches().Value returns only the matched texts.
[^_]*? lazily matches consecutive characters that are not _. (?=-beta) is a positive lookahead for the text -beta but doesn't include the text in the match.
-ne '' is to filter out blank output.
[regex]::Escape() is not necessarily needed in this case. But it is good practice when your text may have special regex characters that you want to match literally.
$betas contains | delimited items because | is the regex OR. Using () to surround the $betas string allows one of those words to be fully matched before matching -alpha in the replacement.
Get-Content gets the entire contents of a file into a variable, so if anything in your file matches that pattern, it'll loop infinitely (because the contents of the file always match your pattern).
PowerShell is heavily based around the concept of the "pipeline" which you can use in conjunction with the Foreach-Object cmdlet to iterate over each line in a file.
I'm not quite clear on what you want the regexes to do, but I don't think the ones you have will do what you want. Try this.
Get-Content -raw C:\content-input.txt | Foreach-Object {
if($_ -match 'beta$') {
$out+=$_ -replace '\w+-alpha',''
}
}
$out | Out-File .\path-to-output.txt
$_ is the default "pipeline variable" aka the current item in the iteration - in this case the current line. Now at least your loop is working!

How to parse string in powershell

I have a Powershell command that outputs multiple lines.
I want to output only one line that contains the name of a .zip file.
Currently, all lines are returned when substring .zip is found:
$p.Start() | Out-Null
$p.WaitForExit()
$output = $p.StandardOutput.ReadToEnd()
$output += $p.StandardError.ReadToEnd()
foreach($line in $output)
{
if($line.Contains(".zip"))
{
$line
}
}
Since you're using .ReadToEnd(), $output receives a single, multi-line string, not an array of lines.
You must therefore split that string into individual lines yourself, using the -split operator.
You can then apply a string-comparison operator such as -match or -like directly to the array of lines to extract matching lines:
# Sample multi-line string.
$output = #'
line 1
foo.zip
another line
'#
$output -split '\r?\n' -match '\.zip' # -> 'foo.zip'
-split is regex-based, and regex \r?\n matches newlines (line breaks) of either variety (CRLF, as typical on Windows, as well as LF, as typical on Unix-like platforms).
-match is also regex-based, which is why the . in \.zip is \-escaped, given that . is a regex metacharacter (it matches any character other than LF by default).
Note that -match, like PowerShell in general, is case-insensitive by default, so both foo.zip and foo.ZIP would match, for instance;
if you do want case-sensitivity, use -cmatch.
As an aside:
I wonder why you're running your command via a [System.Diagnostics.Process] instance, given that you seem to be invoking synchronously while capturing its standard streams.
PowerShell allows you to do that much more simply by direct invocation, optionally with redirection:
$output = ... 2>&1

PowerShell Replace Specific String in File When multiple matches exist

Problem
I am trying to modify a file by replacing a very specific substring within a file; however, in this particular instance, the file contains two lines that are nearly identical.
This line is in an AssemblyInfo file and I am trying to replace the value of the AssemblyVersion. See below:
$CurrentVersion = '1.0.*'
$NewVersion = '1.0.7.1'
# Two similar lines:
// [assembly: AssemblyVersion("1.0.*")] # I want to ignore this line
[assembly: AssemblyVersion("1.0.*")] # I want to target this value
I have been trying several different approaches to this, each with varying results.
$Assembly = 'C:\path\to\AssemblyInfo.cs'
$regex = '(?<!\/\/ \[assembly:AssemblyVersion\(")(?<=AssemblyVersion\(")[^"]*'
$regex2 = ('`n\[assembly: AssemblyVersion\("'+$CurrentVersion+'"\)\]')
Attempt 001
(GC $Assembly) |
ForEach-Object { $_.Replace($CurrentVersion, $NewVersion) } |
Set-Content $Assembly
This was an obvious failure. It ends up replacing both instances of '1.0.*'
Attempt 002
GC $Assembly |
Select-String -Pattern '^\[assembly' -AllMatches |
ForEach-Object { $_.Replace($CurrentVersion, $NewVersion) } |
Set-Content $Assembly
This ended with incompatible command issues...
Attempt 003
(GC $Assembly) | ForEAch-Object {
If ( $_ -MATCH $CurrentVersion ) {
ForEach ($Line in $_) {
$_.Replace($CurrentVersion, $NewVersion)
}
}
} |
Set-Content $Assembly
This ended up removing all lines that contained // as the starting characters... which was not what I wanted...
Attempt 004
GC $Assembly |
ForEach-Object {
$_.Replace($regex2, ('[assembly: AssemblyVersion("'+$NewVersion+'")]'))
} |
Set-Content $Assembly
I get an error saying the file is in use... but that didn't make sense as I couldn't find anything using it...
I have tried several other paths as well, most variations of the above 4 in hopes of achieving my goal. Even going so far as to target the line using the regex line provided above and variations of it to try and grab
Question
Using PowerShell, how can I replace only the line/value of the target line (ignoring the line that begins with // ), but still keep all the lines in the file upon saving the contents?
You are trying to use regex patterns but keep using the string method .Replace() which does not support it. You should be using the -replace operator. That would solve part of your issue.
Looks like you only want to replace the line that does not have anything else on it besides the assembly info.
$path = "C:\temp\test.txt"
$newVersion = "1.0.0.1"
$pattern = '^\s*?\[assembly: AssemblyVersion\("(.*)"\)\]'
(Get-Content $path) | ForEach-Object{
if($_ -match $pattern){
# We have found the matching line
'[assembly: AssemblyVersion("{0}")]' -f $newVersion
} else {
# Output line as is
$_
}
} | Set-Content $path
That would be a verbose yet simple to follow way to do what you want. It will only match if the assembly line is at the start of the line with optional spaces.
I would expect that the pattern '^[assembly: AssemblyVersion\("(.*)"\)\]' works just as well since it should appear at the start of the line anyway.
This comes from another answer about almost this exact problem except now there is more that one match possibility. Also you will see my regex pattern isolates the current version in case you need that. If that is the case looked at the linked question.
You can combine this with other options but if you know ahead of time the version you are going to use then the replacement is pretty simple as well.
$newVersion = "1.6.5.6"
(Get-Content $path -Raw) -replace '(?m)^\[assembly: AssemblyVersion\("(.*)"\)\]', ('[assembly: AssemblyFileVersion("{0}")]' -f $newVersion) | Set-Content $path
That reads the file in as one string and performs the replacement as long as the pattern is at the start of the line in the file. (?m) lets us treat the start of line anchor ^ as something that works at the beginning of lines in the text. Not just the start of the whole string.

Accelerate Powershell script runtime

I'm using a POWERSHELL script which converts a specific log format to a tab or comma separated (CSV) format and it looks like this:
$filename = "filename.log"
foreach ($line in [System.IO.File]::ReadLines($filename)) {
$x = [regex]::Split( $line , 'regex')
$xx = $x -join ","
$xx >> Results.csv
}
And it works fine, but for a 20MB log file it takes almost 20 min to be converted! Is there a way to accelerate it?
My System: CPU: Corei7 3720QM / RAM: 8GB
Update: The log format is like this:
192.168.1.5:24652 172.16.30.8:80 http://www.example.com "useragent"
I want destination format to be:
192.168.1.5,24652,172.16.30.8,80,http://www.example.com,"useragent"
REGEX: ^([\d\.]+):(\d+)\s+([\d\.]+):(\d+)\s+([^ ]*)\s+(\".*\")$
As Lieven Keersmaekers points out, you can do a single -replace operation to do the work.
Additionally, foreach($thing in $o.GetThings()){} will initially block until GetThings() return and then store the entire result in memory, which you have no need for. You can avoid this by using the pipeline instead.
Finally, your regex can be simplified so that the engine doesn't have to parse the entire string before splitting, by matching on either : preceded by a digit or whitespace:
Get-Content filename.log |ForEach-Object {
$_ -replace '(?:(?<=\d)\:|\s+)',','
} |Out-File results.csv

PowerShell to remove text from a string

What is the best way to remove all text in a string after a specific character? In my case "=" and after another character in my case a ,, but keep the text between?
Sample input
=keep this,
Another way to do this is with operator -replace.
$TestString = "test=keep this, but not this."
$NewString = $TestString -replace ".*=" -replace ",.*"
.*= means any number of characters up to and including an equals sign.
,.* means a comma followed by any number of characters.
Since you are basically deleting those two parts of the string, you don't have to specify an empty string with which to replace them. You can use multiple -replaces, but just remember that the order is left-to-right.
$a="some text =keep this,but not this"
$a.split('=')[1].split(',')[0]
returns
keep this
This should do what you want:
C:\PS> if ('=keep this,' -match '=([^,]*)') { $matches[1] }
keep this
This is really old, but I wanted to add my slight variation for anyone else who may stumble across this. Regular expressions are powerful things.
To keep the text which falls between the equal sign and the comma:
-replace "^.*?=(.*?),.*?$",'$1'
This regular expression starts at the beginning of the line, wipes all characters until the first equal sign, captures every character until the next comma, then wipes every character until the end of the line. It then replaces the entire line with the capture group (anything within the parentheses). It will match any line that contains at least one equal sign followed by at least one comma. It is similar to the suggestion by Trix, but unlike that suggestion, this will not match lines which only contain either an equal sign or a comma, it must have both in order.
I referenced #benjamin-hubbard 's answer above to parse the output of dnscmd for A records, and generate a PHP "dictionary"/key-value pairs of IPs and Hostnames. I strung multiple -replace args together to replace text with nothing or tab to format the data for the PHP file.
$DnsDataClean = $DnsData `
-match "^[a-zA-Z0-9].+\sA\s.+" `
-replace "172\.30\.","`$P." `
-replace "\[.*\] " `
-replace "\s[0-9]+\sA\s","`t"
$DnsDataTable = ( $DnsDataClean | `
ForEach-Object {
$HostName = ($_ -split "\t")[0] ;
$IpAddress = ($_ -split "\t")[1] ;
"`t`"$IpAddress`"`t=>`t'$HostName', `n" ;
} | sort ) + "`t`"`$P.255.255`"`t=>`t'None'"
"<?php
`$P = '10.213';
`$IpHostArr = [`n`n$DnsDataTable`n];
?>" | Out-File -Encoding ASCII -FilePath IpHostLookups.php
Get-Content IpHostLookups.php

Resources