How do I add a newline to command output in PowerShell

Question

I run the following code using PowerShell to get a list of add remove programs from the registry   Get-ChildItem -path hklm  software microsoft windows currentversion uninstall         ForEach-Object -Process   Write-Output    GetValue  DisplayName             Out-File addrem txt   I want the list to be separated by newlines per each program  I ve tried   Get-ChildItem -path hklm  software microsoft windows currentversion uninstall         ForEach-Object -Process   Write-Output    GetValue  DisplayName    n           out-file test txt  Get-ChildItem -path hklm  software microsoft windows currentversion uninstall         ForEach-Object     GetValue  DisplayName             Write-Host -Separator  n  Get-ChildItem -path hklm  software microsoft windows currentversion uninstall         ForEach-Object -Process      GetValue  DisplayName             foreach       echo     n     But all result in weird formatting when output to the console  and with three square characters after each line when output to a file  I tried Format-List  Format-Table  and Format-Wide with no luck  Originally  I thought something like this would work   Get-ChildItem -path hklm  software microsoft windows currentversion uninstall         ForEach-Object -Process       GetValue  DisplayName    n      But that just gave me an error

User · Answer

Give this a try   PS gt   nl    Environment   NewLine PS gt  gci hklm  software microsoft windows currentversion uninstall            ForEach      GetValue  DisplayName       Where        Sort           Foreach      nl     Out-File addrem txt -Enc ascii   It yields the following text in my addrem txt file   Adobe AIR  Adobe Flash Player 10 ActiveX        Note  on my system  GetValue  DisplayName   returns null for some entries  so I filter those out  BTW  you were close with this   ForEach-Object -Process       GetValue  DisplayName    n      Except that within a string  if you need to access a property of a variable  that is   evaluate an expression   then you need to use subexpression syntax like so   Foreach-Object -Process         GetValue  DisplayName    r n      Essentially within a double quoted string PowerShell will expand variables like     but it won t evaluate expressions unless you put the expression within a subexpression using this syntax       lt Multiple statements can go in here  gt

User · Answer

Or  just set the output field separator  OFS  to double newlines  and then make sure you get a string when you send it to file    OFS     r n r n      gci -path hklm  software microsoft windows currentversion uninstall        ForEach-Object -Process   write-output    GetValue  DisplayName            out-file addrem txt   Beware to use the   and not the    On my keyboard  US-English Qwerty layout  it s located left of the 1   Moved here from the comments - Thanks Koen Zomers

User · Answer

I think you had the correct idea with your last example  You only got an error because you were trying to put quotes inside an already quoted string  This will fix it   gci -path hklm  software microsoft windows currentversion uninstall   ForEach-Object -Process   write-output     GetValue  DisplayName       n       Edit  Keith s     operator actually creates a better syntax  I always forget about this one   You can also escape quotes inside quotes as so   gci -path hklm  software microsoft windows currentversion uninstall   ForEach-Object -Process   write-output       GetValue   DisplayName     n

User · Answer

Ultimately  what you re trying to do with the EXTRA blank lines between each one is a little confusing      I think what you really want to do is use Get-ItemProperty  You ll get errors when values are missing  but you can suppress them with -ErrorAction 0 or just leave them as reminders  Because the Registry provider returns extra properties  you ll want to stick in a Select-Object that uses the same properties as the Get-Properties   Then if you want each property on a line with a blank line between  use Format-List  otherwise  use Format-Table to get one per line    gci -path hklm  software microsoft windows currentversion uninstall   gp -Name DisplayName  InstallDate    select DisplayName  InstallDate    fl   out-file addrem txt

User · Answer

The option that I tend to use  mostly because it s simple and I don t have to think  is using Write-Output as below  Write-Output will put an EOL marker in the string for you and you can simply output the finished string   Write-Output  stringThatNeedsEOLMarker   Out-File -FilePath PathToFile -Append   Alternatively  you could also just build the entire string using Write-Output and then push the finished string into Out-File

[powershell] How do I add a newline to command output in PowerShell?

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