Is there a way to grab data from this txt file in Powershell?

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I am using Beyond Compare and I have gotten it to ouput if there are any differences into a txt file. However, I want to script this in powershell so that if there are no differences in files, the script will continue and do something else. However, I am not sure this is possible. I have looked through Select-String, but unsure if that will be able to do what I am looking for. Attached is what the txt file looks like when there are no differences as well as what it looks like when there are differences.

Differences No Differences

Is it possible to convert name, size, or modified in the txt file into a variable and then do a condition on whether it is null? Or is there is another way I can do what I am trying to achieve in Powershell? Thanks in advance.

powershell
2 Answers

If all you need to know is whether any differences were found, the following should do:

$noDiffs = '' -eq ((Get-Content -Raw report.txt) -split '\r?\n-+\r?\n')[1].Trim()

  • (Get-Content -Raw report.txt) -split '\r?\n-+\r?\n splits the entire input file by the the divider line (----...) following the table-header line, using a regex (regular expression).

  • [1] looks a the 2nd element of the resulting array, i.e., whatever comes after the divider line, trims any leading and trailing whitespace, and the result is tested for being the empty string.

user_453750

With all respect to the question and the answer from @mklement0.
Using Beyond Compare in a PowerShell script is putting the cart before the horse.
There are a lot of cmdlets in PowerShell which would let you easily compare folders (and a lot more) without doing any text scraping. As using Compare-Object togehter with Get-ChildItem for the given example:

Compare-Object (Get-ChildItem .\Test) (Get-ChildItem .\Test1) -Property Name, Length, LastWriteTime

If you want to do a recursive compare on the relative path, you can do:

Compare-Object (Get-ChildItem .\Test -Recurse -Name) (Get-ChildItem .\Test1 -Recurse -Name)

Note that the -Name parameter will only list relative path strings, if you also want to compare Length and LastWriteTime, You can do:

$TestFolder = 'C:\Test'
$Test1Folder = 'C:\Test1'

$TestFiles  = Get-ChildItem $TestFolder  -File -Recurse |
    Select-Object *,@{N='RelativePath'; E={$_.FullName.SubString($TestFolder.Length)}}
$Test1Files = Get-ChildItem $Test1Folder -File -Recurse |
    Select-Object *,@{N='RelativePath'; E={$_.FullName.SubString($Test1Folder.Length)}}

Compare-Object $TestFiles $Test1Files -Property RelativePath,Length,LastWriteTime
user_17010260
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