Wednesday, April 02, 2008
How to "copy con text.txt" in PowerShell (updated)

Now this is barely worth blogging, but one of the things I used a lot when I was confined to cmd.exe (yes, "confined" is the word I would use, 4NT aside) is the wonderfully simple copy con filename.txt then type a few lines and end it all with CTRL+Z and enter. So, if you're a PowerShell noob and yearn for this olden-days simplicity like dead parrots pine for the fjords, then this is for you:

  1. rm function:copy-console -ea 0 # silentlycontinue   
  2. rm alias:cc -ea 0   
  3.   
  4. # encoding can be String, Unicode, Byte, BigEndianUnicode, UTF8, UTF7, Ascii   
  5. function global:copy-console {   
  6.        
  7.     param(   
  8.         [string]$Filename = $(Throw "Need output filename."),   
  9.         $Encoding = "ASCII"  
  10.     )   
  11.        
  12.     $out = [io.path]::combine($pwd, $Filename)   
  13.   
  14.     $buffer = @()   
  15.     $crlf = "`r`n"  
  16.        
  17.     do {   
  18.         $line = [console]::readline()   
  19.         if ($line -eq $null) { break; }   
  20.         $buffer += $line  
  21.     } while ($TRUE)   
  22.   
  23.     $buffer | set-content $out -Encoding $Encoding  
  24. }   
  25. new-alias cc copy-console   
  26.   
  27. # Usage:   
  28. #   
  29. # PS> cc test.txt -Encoding utf8   
  30. # bleh   
  31. # moop   
  32. # vlorg   
  33. # ^Z   
  34. # PS> cat test.txt   
  35. # bleh   
  36. # ...   
  37.   

I saved this to copy-console.ps1 and aliased it to "cc." Of course, you can do whatever you want - it's probably easier to just put it into a function in your profile. Just place the script above into your profile and remember: CTRL+Z then enter to save.

UPDATE 2008-04-04: Somehow I completely broke this in my attempts to "clean it up" before posting. I've reposted a better version (imho), and implemented encoding support as suggested out in Jason's comment below ;-)

.NET | Monad | PowerShell
posted on Wednesday, April 02, 2008 4:28:46 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [1] Trackback
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Wednesday, April 02, 2008 6:53:47 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
(Sorry if this causes a double post, got an error the first time)

Neat.

There is also a way with standard Powershell cmdlets:

PS> out-file text.txt -i @"
>> Hello,
>> Here is some text,
>> for your file.
>>
>> Good bye!
>> "@
>>
PS> type text.txt
Hello,
Here is some text,
for your file.

Good bye!


This requires a bit more typing, but has the advantage of specifying the encoding if you want and referencing variables.
Jason Archer
Comments are closed.

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