How to replace multiple strings in a file using PowerShell

user_10814 0
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I am writing a script for customising a configuration file. I want to replace multiple instances of strings within this file, and I tried using PowerShell to do the job.

It works fine for a single replace, but doing multiple replaces is very slow because each time it has to parse the whole file again, and this file is very large. The script looks like this:

$original_file = 'path\filename.abc'
$destination_file =  'path\filename.abc.new'
(Get-Content $original_file) | Foreach-Object {
    $_ -replace 'something1', 'something1new'
    } | Set-Content $destination_file

I want something like this, but I don't know how to write it:

$original_file = 'path\filename.abc'
$destination_file =  'path\filename.abc.new'
(Get-Content $original_file) | Foreach-Object {
    $_ -replace 'something1', 'something1aa'
    $_ -replace 'something2', 'something2bb'
    $_ -replace 'something3', 'something3cc'
    $_ -replace 'something4', 'something4dd'
    $_ -replace 'something5', 'something5dsf'
    $_ -replace 'something6', 'something6dfsfds'
    } | Set-Content $destination_file
powershell replace
6 Answers

Just a general reusable solution:

function Replace-String {
    [CmdletBinding()][OutputType([string])] param(
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $True, ValueFromPipeLine = $True)]$InputObject,
        [Parameter(Mandatory = $True, Position = 0)][Array]$Pair,
        [Alias('CaseSensitive')][switch]$MatchCase
    )
    for ($i = 0; $i -lt $Pair.get_Count()) {
        if ($Pair[$i] -is [Array]) {
            $InputObject = $InputObject |Replace-String -MatchCase:$MatchCase $Pair[$i++]
        }
        else {
            $Regex = $Pair[$i++]
            $Substitute = if ($i -lt $Pair.get_Count() -and $Pair[$i] -isnot [Array]) { $Pair[$i++] }
            if ($MatchCase) { $InputObject = $InputObject -cReplace $Regex, $Substitute }
            else            { $InputObject = $InputObject -iReplace $Regex, $Substitute }
        }
    }
    $InputObject
}; Set-Alias Replace Replace-String

Usage:

$lookupTable |Replace 'something1', 'something1aa', 'something2', 'something2bb', 'something3', 'something3cc'

or:

$lookupTable |Replace ('something1', 'something1aa'), ('something2', 'something2bb'), ('something3', 'something3cc')

Example:

'hello world' |Replace ('h','H'), ' ', ('w','W')
HelloWorld
user_17010260
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