PowerShell script to add text to a file

You can easily add text to the end of a text file using the PowerShell Add-Content command. So if you have text file like this which has only one line of text:

. . .and you want to add four new lines of text, you can write a PowerShell script like this:

Add-Content "C:\foofolder\test\test\NL East.txt" "`nPhiladelphia Phillies"

Add-Content "C:\foofolder\test\test\NL East.txt" "Atlanta Braves"

Add-Content "C:\foofolder\test\test\NL East.txt" "Washington Nationals"

Add-Content "C:\foofolder\test\test\NL East.txt" "Florida Marlins"

Open Windows PowerShell ISE [everyone running Windows should have this preinstalled], and enter the script in the script pane, and then run the script by clicking the green play button.

Note that for the first new line, we need to indicate that a line break should be entered. This is done by using a backtick '`' and an 'n' as a reference. The backtick is not the same as an apostrophe. On most keyboards it will be at the top far left before the number keys, and below the tilde key. Adding a `n reference for each new line will lead to the new entries being double spaced.

PowerShell faster than XCOPY

When writing a script to copy files from one destination to another, be sure to use PowersShell instead of creating a batch file with the XCOPY command. In PowerShell, the Copy-Item command followed by the source path and then the destination folder:

Copy-Item -Path "C:\foofolder\2022.07.Litigation Support Tip of the Night V2.docx" -Destination "C:\copy set\" -PassThru

Copy-Item -Path "C:\foofolder\acme.js" -Destination "C:\copy set\" -PassThru

Copy-Item -Path "C:\foofolder\AndroGel Meeting.docx" -Destination "C:\copy set\" -PassThru

Copy-Item -Path "C:\foofolder\Applications" -Destination "C:\copy set\" -PassThru

. . . will copy files to a new location faster than a .bat file.

Use Powershell script to count the number of lines in multiple text files

You can use a PowerShell script to count the number of lines in multiple text files saved to a folder.

Enter the file path for the folder after the Get-ChildItem command on the first line. Then specify the extension of the files to be analyzed towards the end of the first line after 'extension - eq'.

Get-ChildItem c:\foofolder\test2 -recurse | where {$_.extension -eq ".txt"} | % {

$_ | Select-Object -Property 'Name', @{

label = 'Lines'; expression = {

($_ | Get-Content).Length

}

}

} | out-file C:\foofolder\test2\lines1.txt

On the last line provide the file path for a new text file to which PowerShell will write the results. Open Windows PowerShell ISE (x86) and then enter the script in a new pane, and then press the play button on the toolbar.

The text file that is generated will list each file name in the source folder and show the number of lines in each in a column to the right.

I ran this script on a set of more than 100,000 text files (which turned out to consist of more than 9 million lines) and it finished the review in less than 30 minutes.

The script can also be used to find the number of lines in other files such as .csv files.

Be sure to enter the file paths in quotes if they include blank spaces.

Thanks to Hari Parkash for posting this script here.