Here-string and out-file or add-content with line breaks with notepad

Question

_{Wednesday, February 15, 2012 11:45 PM}

Hi guys,

This question is mostly speed but also convenience and to gain knowdledge.

START CODE

$test = Hey

$test2 = PowerShell Programmers

$UserInfoToFile = @"
Name: $test
Username: $test2
Password:
"@

$UserInfoToFile | Out-File -FilePath \nobackup\options$\psscripts\create-user\CreateUserInfo\CreateUserInfo.txt -Encoding ASCII

END CODE

If I open the above in notepad content is not showed like:

Name: Hey

Username: PowerShell Programmers
Password:

But is instead showed like this:

Name: HeyUsername: PowerShell ProgrammersPassword:

If I open the same file in Wordpad no prob. content is showed like:

Name: Hey

Username: PowerShell Programmers
Password:

// Would it be possible to write the code so that notepad will show the here-string as typed?

btw. I have also tried with add-content

Thank you very much.

Red Baron

All replies (9)

_{Thursday, February 16, 2012 12:02 AM ✅Answered | 1 vote}

Seems to work fine for me. 

$test and $test are strings, and you need to quote those.  Are you sure you posted the same code you're running?

[string](0..33|%{[char][int](46+("686552495351636652556262185355647068516270555358646562655775 0645570").substring(($_*2),2))})-replace " "

_{Thursday, February 16, 2012 12:44 AM ✅Answered | 1 vote}

Hi Red Baron,

I agree with mjolinor. your code is working fine and giving output in three line. You may find below information useful.

Scenario 1: while scripting, put all value in single line. 

$UserInfoToFile = "Name: $test Username: $test2 Password: "

Result: In this case, output will be in single line.

Scenario 2: While scripting, put all value in new line.

$UserInfoToFile = "Name: $test 
Username: $test2 
Password: "

Result: In this case you will get output in three lines.

Regarding: Out-File & Add-Content

Out-File: If you use Out-File then it will create new file everytime. It means previous data will be overwritten

Add-Content: In this case output will be appended to existing file/data.

So it depends on your requirement, what to use?

Hope this helps...!!! 

Please click “Mark as Answer” if this post answers your question and click "Vote as Helpful" if this Post helps you.

_{Thursday, February 16, 2012 12:53 AM ✅Answered | 1 vote}

This likely has something to do with line endings.  Creating a multi-line here-string in psh v2 gives you line endings with only the newline character.  Normally in Windows you want to see 2 characters at the end of lines: carriage return, newline.

Try converting the line endings before sending it to the file:
**
$userInfoToFile -replace '\n', "`r`n" | out-file ...**

Thanks,
-Lincoln

_{Thursday, February 16, 2012 10:07 PM ✅Answered}

Yes my mistake. It works just fine. I found that in ISE using tab would somehow ruin the here-string....all good when the tabulator inserts where deleted.

Sorry for wasting your time ;-)

Thank you!

Red Baron

_{Thursday, February 16, 2012 1:26 AM | 3 votes}

Hi,

$test = "Hey" $test2 = "PowerShell Programmers" $UserInfoToFile = @" Name: $test Username: $test2 Password: "@ $UserInfoToFile | Out-File -FilePath D:\test.txt -Encoding ASCII

This code should work fine and should have three lines in the test.txt file.

Best Regards,

Yan Li

Yan Li

TechNet Community Support

_{Thursday, February 16, 2012 3:28 AM}

Here is a "hex" dump of the output file.  You can see lone LF (hex 0A) characters embedded
 instead of CR LF pairs (hex 0D 0A)

_{Thursday, February 16, 2012 5:35 AM}

Here is a "hex" dump of the output file. You can see lone LF (hex 0A) characters embedded

instead of CR LF pairs (hex 0D 0A)

00000000h: 4E 61 6D 65 3A 20 48 65 79 0A 55 73 65 72 6E 61 ; Name: Hey.Userna

00000010h: 6D 65 3A 20 50 6F 77 65 72 53 68 65 6C 6C 20 50 ; me: PowerShell P

00000020h: 72 6F 67 72 61 6D 6D 65 72 73 0A 50 61 73 73 77 ; rogrammers.Passw

00000030h: 6F 72 64 3A 0D 0A                               ; ord:..

_{Monday, October 28, 2019 10:15 PM}

This likely has something to do with line endings.  Creating a multi-line here-string in psh v2 gives you line endings with only the newline character.  Normally in Windows you want to see 2 characters at the end of lines: carriage return, newline.

Try converting the line endings before sending it to the file:
**
$userInfoToFile -replace '\n', "`r`n" | out-file ...**

Thanks,
-Lincoln

Perfect!  I knew it was something like this. But I expected it to be an issue with here-string or even the output functions.  This makes some of the logging generated from developer produced powershell a lot more useful now.

_{Tuesday, October 29, 2019 2:12 PM}

You're right.  Here strings or multi line strings will make "unix text" with no carriage returns (\r), only line feeds (\n), and notepad doesn't display them well.

'hi
how
are
you' -replace '\n','\n' -replace '\r','\r'   # only has \n

hi\nhow\nare\nyou