• July 15, 2024
• in PowerShell, scripting, exercises
• 2 min read

PowerShell "Oopsie"

Task - remove a specific string from each line of multiple CSV files.

This task was added to the scripting exercise list.

First - let's generate some CSV files to work with:

$numberOfFiles = 10
$numberOfRows = 100

$fileNames = 1..$numberOfFiles | % { "file$_.csv" }
$csvData = 1..$numberOfRows | ForEach-Object {
    [PSCustomObject]@{
        Column1 = "Value $_"
        Column2 = "Value $($_ * 2)"
        Column3 = "Value $($_ * 3)"
    }
}

$fileNames | % { $csvData | Export-Csv -Path $_ }

The "Oopsie"

ls *.csv | % { cat $_ | % { $_ -replace "42","" } | out-file $_ -Append }

This command will never finish. Run it for a moment (and then kill it), see the result, and try to figure out what happens. Explanation below.

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The explanation

Get-Content (aka. cat) keeps the file open and reads the content that our command is appending, thus creating an infinite loop.

The fix

There are many ways to fix this this "oopsie"

Perhaps the simplest one is to not write to and read from the exact same file. A sensible rule is when processing files always write to a different file:

ls *.csv | % { cat $_ | % { $_ -replace "42","" } | out-file -path "fixed$($_.Name)" }

Knowing the reason for our command hanging we can make sure the whole file is read before we overwrite it:

ls *.csv | % { (cat $_ ) | % { $_ -replace "42","" } | out-file $_ }
ls *.csv | % { (cat $_ ) -replace "42","" | out-file $_ } # we can also use -replace as an array operator

I'm amazed by github's co-pilot answer for "powershell one liner to remove a specific text from multiple CSV files":

Get-ChildItem -Filter "*.csv" | ForEach-Object { (Get-Content $_.FullName) -replace "string_to_replace", "replacement_string" | Set-Content $_.FullName }