CODEWITHSUNDEEP
powershell
RandomActsOfCode
RandomActsOfCode

Reputation: 3285

Capturing command output in Powershell as string instead of array of strings

I am trying to capture the output of running an external command as a string, but the result returned by Powershell is always an array of strings. It is my understanding that Powershell splits the output on newlines (Windows or Unix line endings) and stores the result in an array, but I would like these newlines to be preserved since this is for an svn pre-commit hook script to detect if a committed file has mixed line endings. 

$output = svnlook cat -t $transId -r $repos $filename

At this point line endings have been stripped, and $output is an array of strings, one per line of output.

Redirecting to a file does not seem to work since this normalizes the line endings. How do you tell Powershell to not split a command's output?

Thanks!

Upvotes: 15

Views: 22358

Answers (3)

user189198
user189198

Reputation:

Just wrap the "inner" command in parentheses, and use the -join operator with "`n" on the right.

# Preserve line breaks
$result = (ipconfig) -join "`n";

# Remove line breaks
$result = (ipconfig) -join '';

Upvotes: 10

Ansgar Wiechers
Ansgar Wiechers

Reputation: 200573

Pipe the command output into the Out-String cmdlet:

$output = svnlook cat -t $transId -r $repos $filename | Out-String

Upvotes: 19

mjolinor
mjolinor

Reputation: 68341

If you need it as a single string, you can just cast the result to [string]

[string]$output = svnlook cat -t $transId -r $repos $filename

Upvotes: 5

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