PowerShell Script to Find and Replace for all Files with a Specific Extension

Question

I have several configuration files on Windows Server 2008 nested like such   C  Projects Project 1 project1 config  C  Projects Project 2 project2 config   In my configuration I need to do a string replace like such    lt add key  Environment  value  Dev   gt    will become    lt add key  Environment  value  Demo   gt    I thought about using batch scripting  but there was no good way to do this  and I heard that with PowerShell scripting you can easily perform this  I have found examples of find replace  but I was hoping for a way that would traverse all folders within my C  Projects directory and find any files that end with the   config  extension  When it finds one  I want it to replace my string values   Any good resources to find out how to do this or any PowerShell gurus that can offer some insight

User · Answer

I would go with xml and xpath   dir C  Projects project   project  config -recurse   foreach-object        wc    xml  Get-Content    fullname      wc SelectNodes    add  key  Environment    value  Dev       Foreach-Object     value    Demo         wc Save    fullname

User · Answer

Here a first attempt at the top of my head      configFiles   Get-ChildItem     config -rec foreach   file in  configFiles         Get-Content  file PSPath        Foreach-Object      -replace  Dev    Demo          Set-Content  file PSPath

User · Answer

This powershell example looks for all instances of the string   foo   in a folder and its subfolders  replaces   foo   with   bar   AND DOES NOT REWRITE files that don t contain the  string   foo   This way you don t destroy the file last update datetime stamps where the string was not found   Get-ChildItem  -Path C  YOUR ROOT PATH     -recurse     ForEach  If  Get-Content    FullName   Select-String -Pattern    foo                   Get-Content      ForEach     -replace    foo       bar       Set-Content

User · Answer

PowerShell is a good choice    It is very easy to enumerate files in given directory  read them and process    The script could look like this   Get-ChildItem C  Projects   config -recurse       Foreach-Object            c         Get-Content            c    c -replace   lt add key  Environment  value  Dev   gt     lt add key  Environment  value  Demo   gt            IO File   WriteAllText    FullName    c -join   r n            I split the code to more lines to be readable for you  Note that you could use Set-Content instead of  IO File   WriteAllText  but it adds new line at the end  With WriteAllText you can avoid it   Otherwise the code could look like this   c   Set-Content    FullName

User · Answer

I found comment of  Artyom useful but unfortunately he has not posted an answer   This is the short version  in my opinion best version  of the accepted answer   ls   config -rec      f      gc  f PSPath         -replace  Dev    Demo     sc  f PSPath

User · Answer

I have written a little helper function to replace text in a file   function Replace-TextInFile       Param           string  FilePath           string  Pattern           string  Replacement             System IO File   WriteAllText           FilePath            System IO File   ReadAllText  FilePath  -replace  Pattern   Replacement            Example   Get-ChildItem     config -rec   ForEach-Object        Replace-TextInFile -FilePath    -Pattern  old  -Replacement  new

User · Answer

This approach works well   gci C  Projects   config -recurse   ForEach      Get-Content      ForEach     -replace  old    new      Set-Content          Change  old  and  new  to their corresponding values  or use variables   Don t forget the parenthesis -- without which you will receive an access error

User · Answer

When doing recursive replacement  the path and filename need to be included   Get-ChildItem -Recurse   ForEach     Get-Content    PSPath    ForEach    -creplace  old    new      Set-Content    PSPath     This wil replace all  old  with  new  case-sensitive in all the files of your folders of your current directory

[powershell] PowerShell Script to Find and Replace for all Files with a Specific Extension

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