Edit a text file on the console using Powershell

Question

I m trying to figure out the easiest way to edit text files in the console  PowerShell in my case    I m using Windows 7 64 bit  It galls me that I can t just type edit filename txt to edit a file   That used to work  but that s all changed   What are my options to view and edit text files within the windows console  and if you tell me to install and learn VIM I m going to punch you in the face    -

User · Answer

I agree with Sven Plath  Nano is a great alternative  If you have Chocolatey setup  Install nano by typing the following in Powershell   PS C  dev  gt  choco install nano   Then  to edit somefile txt enter   PS C  dev  gt  nano somefile txt   It s pretty neat   Edit  Nano works well on my Windows 10 box but takes incredibly long to load the first time on my Windows 7 machine  That made me switch to vim  vi  on my Win 7 laptop  PS C  dev  gt  choco install vim PS C  dev  gt  vim  profile   Add a line in the powershell profile to Set-Alias  sal   sal vi vim   Esc -   - x - Enter  -

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You could install Far Manager  a great OFM  by the way  and call its editor like that   Far  e filename txt

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I m thinking you could just use notepad  like this   notepad myfile extension   It should open in notepad

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You can do the following  bash -c  quot nano index html quot   The command above opens the index html file with the nano editor within Powershell  Alternatively  you can use the vim editor with the following command bash -c  quot vi index html quot

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I had to do some debugging on a Windows Nano docker image and needed to edit the content of a file  who would have guessed it was so difficult   I used a combination of Get-Content and Set-Content and base 64 encoding decoding to update files  For instance  Editing foo txt  PS C  app gt  Set-Content foo txt  Hello World                                                                                                                                                                                          PS C  app gt  Get-Content foo txt                                                                                                                                                                                                       Hello World                                                                                                                                                                                                                          PS C  app gt   System Text Encoding   UTF8 GetString  System Convert   FromBase64String  TXkgbmV3IG11bHRpDQpsaW5lIGRvY3VtZW50DQp3aXRoIGFsbCBraW5kcyBvZiBmdW4gc3R1ZmYNCiFAIyVeJSQmXiYoJiopIUAjIw0KLi4ud29ybGQ       Set-Content foo txt  PS C  app gt  Get-Content foo txt                                                                                                                                                                                                       My new multi                                                                                                                                                                                                                         line document                                                                                                                                                                                                                        with all kinds of fun stuff                                                                                                                                                                                                                  amp   amp   amp                                                                                                                                                                                                                             world                                                                                                                                                                                                                             PS C  app gt           The trick is piping the base 64 decoded string to Set-Content   System Text Encoding   UTF8 GetString  System Convert   FromBase64String           Set-Content foo txt    Its no vim but I can update files  for what its worth

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Why not use notepad   notepad exe filename txt   The old edit com works in PowerShell  at least on my box  Windows 7 Pro x86  but in x64 it doesn t work due to its 16bit architecture   You can take a look at this easy editor

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I am a retired engineer who grew up with DOS  Fortran  IBM360  etc  in the 60 s and like others on this blog I sorely miss the loss of a command line editor in 64-bit Windows  After spending a week browsing the internet and testing editors  I wanted to share my best solution  Notepad    It s a far cry from DOS EDIT  but there are some side benefits  It is unfortunately a screen editor  requires a mouse  and is consequently slow  On the other hand it is a decent Fortran source editor and has row and column numbers displayed  It can keep multiple tabs for files being edited and even remembers where the cursor was last  I of course keep typing keyboard codes  50 years of habit  but surprisingly at least some of them work  Maybe not a documented feature  I renamed the editor to EDIT EXE  set up a path to it  and invoke it from command line  It s not too bad  I m living with it  BTW be careful not to use the tab key in Fortran source  Puts an ASCII 6 in the text  It s invisible and gFortran  at least  can t deal with it  Notepad   probably has a lot of features that I don t have time to mess with

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install vim from online  and then you can just do      vim  filename  to edit that file

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Kinesics Text Editor   It s super fast and handles large text files  though minimal in features  There s a GUI version and console version  k exe  included  Should work the same on linux    Example  In my test it took 7 seconds to open a 500mb disk image

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In linux i m a fun of Nano or vim  i used to use nano and now vim  and they are really good choices  There is a version for windows  Here is the link https   nano-editor org dist win32-support   However more often we need to open the file in question  from the command line as quick as possible  to not loose time  We can use notepad exe  we can use notepad    and yea  we can use sublim text  I think there is no greater then a lightweight  Too powerful editor  Sublime text here  for the thing  we just don t want to get out of the command line  or we want to use the command line to be fast  and yea  We can use sublime text for that  it contain a command line that let you quickly open a file in sublime text  Also there is different options arguments you can make use of  Here how you do it    First you need to know that there is subl exe  a command line interface for sublim      1-  first we create a batch file  the content is     ECHO OFF   C  Program Files Sublime Text 3 subl exe       We can save that wherever we want  I preferred to create a directory on sublime text installation directory  And saved there the batch file we come to write and create    Remark  change the path above fallowing your installation    2-  we add that folder to the path system environment variable  and that s it     or from system config  windows 7 8 10     then     then     then we copy the path     then we add that to the path variable     too quick   launch a new cmd and now you ve got subl command working well     to open a file you need just to use subl command as fellow   subl myfileToOpen txt   you can also use one of the options arguments  type --help to see them as in the image above    Also note that you can apply the same method with mostly any editor of your choice

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While risking you punching me  I guess you are stuck with the solution you mentioned  Have a look at this posting on SuperUser   Which are the non-x text editors in Powershell   Also  there is a nano version for windows   Nano Editor  I ll duck and cover now  hopefully someone will have a more sufficient answer

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Not sure if this will benefit anybody  but if you are using Azure CloudShell PowerShell you can just type  code file txt  And Visual Studio code will popup with the file to be edit  pretty great

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Bit of a resurrect but for anyone else coming to this question  take a look at the Micro editor  It s a small standalone EXE with no dependencies and with native Windows 32 64 versions  Works well in both PowerShell and CMD EXE

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Well there are thousand ways to edit a Text file on windows 7  Usually people Install Sublime   Atom and Notepad   as an editor  For command line   I think the Basic Edit command  by the way which does not work on 64 bit computers  is good Alternatively I find type con   filename as a very Applaudable method If windows is newly installed and One wants to avoid Notepad  This might be it   The perfect usage of Type as an editor      reference of the Image - https   www codeproject com Articles 34280 How-to-Write-Applet-Code

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If you use Windows container and you want change any file  you can get and use Vim in Powershell console easily   To shelled to the Windows Docker container with PowerShell   docker exec -it  lt name gt  powershell   First get Chocolatey package manager   Invoke-WebRequest https   chocolatey org install ps1 -UseBasicParsing   Invoke-Expression  Install Vim  choco install vim Refresh ENVIRONMENTAL VARIABLE You can just exit and shell back to the container Go to file location and Vim it vim file txt

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You can install nano in powershell via choco - It s a low friction way to get text editing capabilities into powershell    Install Choco   Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force  iex   New-Object System Net WebClient  DownloadString  https   chocolatey org install ps1       Install Nano   choco install nano    Profit   nano myfile txt   Best part is it becomes part of the path  and stays working across reboots etc

[text-editor] Edit a text file on the console using Powershell

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