[powershell] How can I replace every occurrence of a String in a file with PowerShell?

Using PowerShell, I want to replace all exact occurrences of [MYID] in a given file with MyValue. What is the easiest way to do so?

This is what I use, but it is slow on large text files.

get-content $pathToFile | % { $_ -replace $stringToReplace, $replaceWith } | set-content $pathToFile

If you are going to be replacing strings in large text files and speed is a concern, look into using System.IO.StreamReader and System.IO.StreamWriter.

try
{
   $reader = [System.IO.StreamReader] $pathToFile
   $data = $reader.ReadToEnd()
   $reader.close()
}
finally
{
   if ($reader -ne $null)
   {
       $reader.dispose()
   }
}

$data = $data -replace $stringToReplace, $replaceWith

try
{
   $writer = [System.IO.StreamWriter] $pathToFile
   $writer.write($data)
   $writer.close()
}
finally
{
   if ($writer -ne $null)
   {
       $writer.dispose()
   }
}

(The code above has not been tested.)

There is probably a more elegant way to use StreamReader and StreamWriter for replacing text in a document, but that should give you a good starting point.

I found a little known but amazingly cool way to do it from Payette's Windows Powershell in Action. You can reference files like variables, similar to $env:path, but you need to add the curly braces.

${c:file.txt} = ${c:file.txt} -replace 'oldvalue','newvalue'

(Get-Content file.txt) | 
Foreach-Object {$_ -replace '\[MYID\]','MyValue'}  | 
Out-File file.txt

Note the parentheses around (Get-Content file.txt) is required:

Without the parenthesis the content is read, one line at a time, and flows down the pipeline until it reaches out-file or set-content, which tries to write to the same file, but it's already open by get-content and you get an error. The parenthesis causes the operation of content reading to be performed once (open, read and close). Only then when all lines have been read, they are piped one at a time and when they reach the last command in the pipeline they can be written to the file. It's the same as $content=content; $content | where ...

Credit to @rominator007

I wrapped it into a function (because you may want to use it again)

function Replace-AllStringsInFile($SearchString,$ReplaceString,$FullPathToFile)
{
    $content = [System.IO.File]::ReadAllText("$FullPathToFile").Replace("$SearchString","$ReplaceString")
    [System.IO.File]::WriteAllText("$FullPathToFile", $content)
}

NOTE: This is NOT case sensitive!!!!!

See this post: String.Replace ignoring case

A bit old and different, as I needed to change a certain line in all instances of a particular file name.

Also, Set-Content was not returning consistent results, so I had to resort to Out-File.

Code below:

$FileName =''
$OldLine = ''
$NewLine = ''
$Drives = Get-PSDrive -PSProvider FileSystem
foreach ($Drive in $Drives) {
    Push-Location $Drive.Root
        Get-ChildItem -Filter "$FileName" -Recurse | ForEach { 
            (Get-Content $_.FullName).Replace($OldLine, $NewLine) | Out-File $_.FullName
        }
    Pop-Location
}

This is what worked best for me on this PowerShell version:

Major.Minor.Build.Revision

5.1.16299.98

I prefer using the File-class of .NET and its static methods as seen in the following example.

$content = [System.IO.File]::ReadAllText("c:\bla.txt").Replace("[MYID]","MyValue")
[System.IO.File]::WriteAllText("c:\bla.txt", $content)

This has the advantage of working with a single String instead of a String-array as with Get-Content. The methods also take care of the encoding of the file (UTF-8 BOM, etc.) without you having to take care most of the time.

Also the methods don't mess up the line endings (Unix line endings that might be used) in contrast to an algorithm using Get-Content and piping through to Set-Content.

So for me: Fewer things that could break over the years.

A little-known thing when using .NET classes is that when you have typed in "[System.IO.File]::" in the PowerShell window you can press the Tab key to step through the methods there.

The one above only runs for "One File" only, but you can also run this for multiple files within your folder:

Get-ChildItem 'C:yourfile*.xml' -Recurse | ForEach {
     (Get-Content $_ | ForEach  { $_ -replace '[MYID]', 'MyValue' }) |
     Set-Content $_
}

This worked for me using the current working directory in PowerShell. You need to use the FullName property, or it won't work in PowerShell version 5. I needed to change the target .NET framework version in ALL my CSPROJ files.

gci -Recurse -Filter *.csproj |
% { (get-content "$($_.FullName)")
.Replace('<TargetFramework>net47</TargetFramework>', '<TargetFramework>net462</TargetFramework>') |
 Set-Content "$($_.FullName)"}

You could try something like this:

$path = "C:\testFile.txt"
$word = "searchword"
$replacement = "ReplacementText"
$text = get-content $path 
$newText = $text -replace $word,$replacement
$newText > $path

If You Need to Replace Strings in Multiple Files:

It should be noted that the different methods posted here can be wildly different with regard to the time it takes to complete. For me, I regularly have large numbers of small files. To test what is most performant, I extracted 5.52 GB (5,933,604,999 bytes) of XML in 40,693 separate files and ran through three of the answers I found here:

## 5.52 GB (5,933,604,999 bytes) of XML files (40,693 files) 

#### Test 1 - Plain Replace
$start = get-date
$xmls = (Get-ChildItem -Path "I:\TestseT\All_XML" -Recurse -Filter *.xml).FullName
foreach ($xml in $xmls)
{
(Get-Content $xml).replace("'", " ") | Set-Content $xml
}
$end   = get-date
NEW-TIMESPAN –Start $Start –End $End
<#
TotalMinutes: 103.725113128333
#>

#### Test 2 - Replace with -Raw
$start = get-date
$xmls = (Get-ChildItem -Path "I:\TestseT\All_XML" -Recurse -Filter *.xml).FullName
foreach ($xml in $xmls)
{
(Get-Content $xml -Raw).replace("'", " ") | Set-Content $xml
}
$end   = get-date
NEW-TIMESPAN –Start $Start –End $End
<#
TotalMinutes: 10.1600227983333
#>

#### Test 3 - .NET, System.IO
$start = get-date
$xmls = (Get-ChildItem -Path "I:\TestseT\All_XML" -Recurse -Filter *.xml).FullName
foreach ($xml in $xmls)
{
$txt = [System.IO.File]::ReadAllText("$xml").Replace("'"," ") 
[System.IO.File]::WriteAllText("$xml", $txt)
}
$end   = get-date
NEW-TIMESPAN –Start $Start –End $End
<#
TotalMinutes: 5.83619516833333
#>

Small correction for the Set-Content command. If the searched string is not found the Set-Content command will blank (empty) the target file.

You can first verify if the string you are looking for exist or not. If not it will not replace anything.

If (select-string -path "c:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts" -pattern "String to look for") `
    {(Get-Content c:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts).replace('String to look for', 'String to replace with') | Set-Content c:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts}
    Else{"Nothing happened"}

Here's a fairly simple one that supports multiline regular expressions, multiple files (using the pipeline), specifying output encoding, etc. Not recommended for very large files due to the ReadAllText method.

# Update-FileText.ps1

#requires -version 2

<#
.SYNOPSIS
Updates text in files using a regular expression.

.DESCRIPTION
Updates text in files using a regular expression.

.PARAMETER Pattern
Specifies the regular expression pattern.

.PARAMETER Replacement
Specifies the regular expression replacement pattern.

.PARAMETER Path
Specifies the path to one or more files. Wildcards are not supported. Each file is read entirely into memory to support multi-line searching and replacing, so performance may be slow for large files.

.PARAMETER CaseSensitive
Specifies case-sensitive matching. The default is to ignore case.

.PARAMETER SimpleMatch
Specifies a simple match rather than a regular expression match (i.e., the Pattern parameter specifies a simple string rather than a regular expression).

.PARAMETER Multiline
Changes the meaning of ^ and $ so they match at the beginning and end, respectively, of any line, and not just the beginning and end of the entire file. The default is that ^ and $, respectively, match the beginning and end of the entire file.

.PARAMETER UnixText
Causes $ to match only linefeed (\n) characters. By default, $ matches carriage return+linefeed (\r\n). (Windows-based text files usually use \r\n as line terminators, while Unix-based text files usually use only \n.)

.PARAMETER Overwrite
Overwrites a file by creating a temporary file containing all replacements and then replacing the original file with the temporary file. The default is to output but not overwrite.

.PARAMETER Force
Allows overwriting of read-only files. Note that this parameter cannot override security restrictions.

.PARAMETER Encoding
Specifies the encoding for the file when -Overwrite is used. Possible values for this parameter are ASCII, BigEndianUnicode, Unicode, UTF32, UTF7, and UTF8. The default value is ASCII.

.INPUTS
System.IO.FileInfo.

.OUTPUTS
System.String (single-line file) or System.String[] (file with more than one line) without the -Overwrite parameter, or nothing with the -Overwrite parameter.

.LINK
about_Regular_Expressions

.EXAMPLE
C:\> Update-FileText.ps1 '(Ferb) and (Phineas)' '$2 and $1' Story.txt

This command replaces the text 'Ferb and Phineas' with the text 'Phineas and Ferb' in the file Story.txt and outputs the content. Note that the pattern and replacement strings are enclosed in single quotes to prevent variable expansion.

.EXAMPLE
C:\> Update-FileText.ps1 'Perry' 'Agent P' Story2.txt -Overwrite

This command replaces the text 'Perry' with the text 'Agent P' in the file Story2.txt.
#>

[CmdletBinding(SupportsShouldProcess = $true,ConfirmImpact = "High")]
param(
  [Parameter(Mandatory = $true,Position = 0,ValueFromPipeline = $true)]
  [String[]] $Path,

  [Parameter(Mandatory = $true,Position = 1)]
  [String] $Pattern,

  [Parameter(Mandatory = $true,Position = 2)]
  [AllowEmptyString()]
  [String] $Replacement,

  [Switch] $CaseSensitive,

  [Switch] $SimpleMatch,

  [Switch] $Multiline,

  [Switch] $UnixText,

  [Switch] $Overwrite,

  [Switch] $Force,

  [ValidateSet("ASCII","BigEndianUnicode","Unicode","UTF32","UTF7","UTF8")]
  [String] $Encoding = "ASCII"
)

begin {
  function Get-TempName {
    param(
      $path
    )
    do {
      $tempName = Join-Path $path ([IO.Path]::GetRandomFilename())
    }
    while ( Test-Path $tempName )
    $tempName
  }

  if ( $SimpleMatch ) {
      $Pattern = [Regex]::Escape($Pattern)
  }
  else {
    if ( -not $UnixText ) {
      $Pattern = $Pattern -replace '(?<!\\)\$','\r$'
    }
  }

  function New-Regex {
    $regexOpts = [Text.RegularExpressions.RegexOptions]::None
    if ( -not $CaseSensitive ) {
      $regexOpts = $regexOpts -bor [Text.RegularExpressions.RegexOptions]::IgnoreCase
    }
    if ( $Multiline ) {
      $regexOpts = $regexOpts -bor [Text.RegularExpressions.RegexOptions]::Multiline
    }
    New-Object Text.RegularExpressions.Regex $Pattern,$regexOpts
  }

  $Regex = New-Regex

  function Update-FileText {
    param(
      $path
    )
    $pathInfo = Resolve-Path -LiteralPath $path
    if ( $pathInfo ) {
      if ( (Get-Item $pathInfo).GetType().FullName -eq "System.IO.FileInfo" ) {
        $fullName = $pathInfo.Path
        Write-Verbose "Reading '$fullName'"
        $text = [IO.File]::ReadAllText($fullName)
        Write-Verbose "Finished reading '$fullName'"
        if ( -not $Overwrite ) {
          $regex.Replace($text,$Replacement)
        }
        else {
          $tempName = Get-TempName (Split-Path $fullName -Parent)
          Set-Content $tempName $null -Confirm:$false
          if ( $? ) {
            Write-Verbose "Created file '$tempName'"
            try {
              Write-Verbose "Started writing '$tempName'"
              [IO.File]::WriteAllText("$tempName",$Regex.Replace($text,$Replacement),[Text.Encoding]::$Encoding)
              Write-Verbose "Finished writing '$tempName'"
              Write-Verbose "Started copying '$tempName' to '$fullName'"
              Copy-Item $tempName $fullName -Force:$Force -ErrorAction Continue
              if ( $? ) {
                Write-Verbose "Finished copying '$tempName' to '$fullName'"
              }
              Remove-Item $tempName
              if ( $? ) {
                Write-Verbose "Removed file '$tempName'"
              }
            }
            catch [Management.Automation.MethodInvocationException] {
              Write-Error $Error[0]
            }
          }
        }
      }
      else {
        Write-Error "The item '$path' must be a file in the file system." -Category InvalidType
      }
    }
  }
}

process {
  foreach ( $PathItem in $Path ) {
    if ( $Overwrite ) {
      if ( $PSCmdlet.ShouldProcess("'$PathItem'","Overwrite file") ) {
        Update-FileText $PathItem
      }
    }
    else {
      Update-FileText $PathItem
    }
  }
}

Also available as a gist on Github.