How to print a certain line of a file with PowerShell

Question

I don t have a decent text editor on this server  but I need to see what s causing an error on line 10 of a certain file  I do have PowerShell though

User · Answer

Just for fun  here some test    Added this for  Graimer s request     not same computer  but one with HD little more  performant          measure-command   Get-Content ita ita txt -TotalCount 260000   Select-Object -Last 1     Days                0 Hours               0  Minutes             0 Seconds             28 Milliseconds        893 Ticks               288932649 TotalDays           0 000334412788194444 TotalHours          0 00802590691666667 TotalMinutes        0 481554415 TotalSeconds        28 8932649 TotalMilliseconds   28893 2649    gt  measure-command    gc  c  ps ita ita txt   260000      Days                0 Hours               0 Minutes             0 Seconds             9 Milliseconds        257 Ticks               92572893 TotalDays           0 000107144552083333 TotalHours          0 00257146925 TotalMinutes        0 154288155 TotalSeconds        9 2572893 TotalMilliseconds   9257 2893    gt  measure-command     System IO File   ReadAllLines  c  ps ita ita txt    260000      Days                0 Hours               0 Minutes             0 Seconds             0 Milliseconds        234 Ticks               2348059 TotalDays           2 71766087962963E-06 TotalHours          6 52238611111111E-05 TotalMinutes        0 00391343166666667 TotalSeconds        0 2348059 TotalMilliseconds   234 8059     gt  measure-command  get-content   ita ita txt   select -index 260000    Days                0 Hours               0 Minutes             0 Seconds             36 Milliseconds        591 Ticks               365912596 TotalDays           0 000423509949074074 TotalHours          0 0101642387777778 TotalMinutes        0 609854326666667 TotalSeconds        36 5912596 TotalMilliseconds   36591 2596   the winner is     System IO File   ReadAllLines  path    index

User · Answer

Here s a function that uses  NET s System IO classes directly   function GetLineAt  String   path   Int32   index         System IO FileMode   mode    System IO FileMode   Open       System IO FileAccess   access    System IO FileAccess   Read       System IO FileShare   share    System IO FileShare   Read       Int32   bufferSize   16   1024       System IO FileOptions   options    System IO FileOptions   SequentialScan       System Text Encoding   defaultEncoding    System Text Encoding   UTF8        FileStream String  FileMode  FileAccess  FileShare  Int32  FileOptions  constructor       http   msdn microsoft com library d0y914c5 aspx      System IO FileStream   input   New-Object           -TypeName  System IO FileStream            -ArgumentList   path   mode   access   share   bufferSize   options         StreamReader Stream  Encoding  Boolean  Int32  constructor       http   msdn microsoft com library ms143458 aspx      System IO StreamReader   reader   New-Object           -TypeName  System IO StreamReader            -ArgumentList   input   defaultEncoding   true   bufferSize        String   line    null       Int32   currentIndex   0       try               while    line    reader ReadLine    -ne  null                        if   currentIndex   -eq  index                                return  line                                    finally                 Close  reader and  input          reader Close                 There are less than   index   1  lines in the file     return  null     GetLineAt  file txt  9    Tweaking the  bufferSize variable might affect performance   A more concise version that uses default buffer sizes and doesn t provide optimization hints could look like this   function GetLineAt  String   path   Int32   index          StreamReader String  Boolean  constructor       http   msdn microsoft com library 9y86s1a9 aspx      System IO StreamReader   reader   New-Object           -TypeName  System IO StreamReader            -ArgumentList   path   true        String   line    null       Int32   currentIndex   0       try               while    line    reader ReadLine    -ne  null                        if   currentIndex   -eq  index                                return  line                                    finally                reader Close                 There are less than   index   1  lines in the file     return  null     GetLineAt  file txt  9

User · Answer

It s as easy as using select   Get-Content file txt   Select -Index  line - 1    E g  to get line 5  Get-Content file txt   Select -Index 4   Or you can use    Get-Content file txt  4

User · Answer

To reduce memory consumption and to speed up the search you may use -ReadCount option of Get-Content cmdlet  https   technet microsoft com ru-ru library hh849787 aspx     This may save hours when you working with large files   Here is an example    n   60699010  src    hugefile csv   batch   100  timer    Diagnostics Stopwatch   StartNew     count   0 Get-Content  src -ReadCount  batch -TotalCount  n              count       Length     if   count -ge  n                  n -  count      Length - 1             timer Stop    timer Elapsed   This prints  n th line and elapsed time

User · Answer

You can use the -TotalCount parameter of the Get-Content cmdlet to read the first n lines  then use Select-Object to return only the nth line   Get-Content file txt -TotalCount 9   Select-Object -Last 1    Per the comment from  C B  this should improve performance by only reading up to and including the nth line  rather than the entire file   Note that you can use the aliases -First or -Head in place of -TotalCount

User · Answer

This will show the 10th line of myfile txt   get-content myfile txt   select -first 1 -skip 9  both -first and -skip are optional parameters  and -context  or -last may be useful in similar situations

[powershell] How to print a certain line of a file with PowerShell?

Examples related to powershell