Adding a newline (line break) to a Powershell script

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I have a script I am running in Powershell, and I want to be able to put a line in my resulting text file output between the ccript name and the script content itself.

Currently, from the below, the line $str_msg = $file,[System.IO.File]::ReadAllText($file.FullName) is what I need, but I need a line to separate $file and the result of the next expression. How can I do this?

foreach ($file in [System.IO.Directory]::GetFiles($sqldir,"*.sql", 
  [System.IO.SearchOption]::AllDirectories))
{
  $file = [System.IO.FileInfo]::new($file);


  $Log.SetLogDir("");
  $str_msg = $file,[System.IO.File]::ReadAllText($file.FullName);


  $Log.AddMsg($str_msg);
  Write-Output $str_msg;


  # ...

}
string-interpolation newline powershell
3 Answers

  • $str_msg = $file,[System.IO.File]::ReadAllText($file.FullName) doesn't create a string, it creates a 2-element array ([object[]]), composed of the $file [System.IO.FileInfo] instance, and the string with the contents of that file.

  • Presumably, the .AddMsg() method expects a single string, so PowerShell stringifies the array in order to convert it to a single string; PowerShell stringifies an array by concatenating the elements with a single space as the separator by default; e.g.: [string] (1, 2) yields '1 2'.

Therefore, it's best to compose $str_msg as a string to begin with, with an explicit newline as the separator, e.g.:

$strMsg = "$file`r`n$([System.IO.File]::ReadAllText($file.FullName))"

Note the use of escape sequence "`r`n" to produce a CRLF, the Windows-specific newline sequence; on Unix-like platforms, you'd use just "`n" (LF).

.NET offers a cross-platform abstraction, [Environment]::NewLine, which returns the platform-appropriate newline sequence (which you could alternatively embed as $([Environment]::NewLine) inside "...").

An alternative to string interpolation is to use -f, the string-formatting operator, which is based on the .NET String.Format() method:

$strMsg = '{0}{1}{2}' -f $file, 
                        [Environment]::NewLine, 
                        [System.IO.File]::ReadAllText($file.FullName)
user_453750

Cheers to the first answer

Backtick-r+backtick-n will do a carriage return with a new line in PS. You could do a Get-Content of your $file variable as a new array variable, and insert the carriage return at a particular index:

Example file: test123.txt

If the file contents were this:

line1
line2
line3

Store the contents in an array variable so you have indices

[Array]$fileContent = Get-Content C:\path\to\test123.txt

To add a carriage return between line2 and line3:

$fileContent2 = $fileContent[0..1] + "`r`n" + $fileContent[2]

Then output a new file:

$fileContent2 | Out-File -FilePath C:\path\to\newfile.txt

Hope this alternate approach helps future answer seekers

user_27342590

You need to use the carriage return powershell special character, which is "`r".

Use it like this to add a carriage return in your line :

$str_msg = $file,"`r",[System.IO.File]::ReadAllText($file.FullName);

Check this documentation to have more details on Poewershell special characters.

user_39362950
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