{"id":98,"date":"2007-02-15T11:16:00","date_gmt":"2007-02-15T15:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jdhitsolutions.com\/blog\/2007\/02\/15\/more-fun-with-get-content\/"},"modified":"2013-07-02T08:11:43","modified_gmt":"2013-07-02T12:11:43","slug":"more-fun-with-get-content","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jdhitsolutions.com\/blog\/powershell\/98\/more-fun-with-get-content\/","title":{"rendered":"More Fun with Get-Content"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few followups on my recent post about Get-Content. First, you can also use the CAT alias if you're used to the Unix world, or TYPE in place of get-content. The Get-Content cmdlet does have a parameter called -totalcount that will return the specified number of lines from the beginning of the file:<\/p>\n

cat c:\\boot.ini -totalcount 3<\/span><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, you can't specify a range or start at the end of the file. However, there is a way to simplify the one-liner I used. You can use the built in common parameters and specify a variable with Get-Content. This command will get the last five lines of the file log.txt:<\/p>\n

cat log.txt -outvariable c >$null ; $c[($c.count-5)..($c.count)]<\/span><\/p>\n

I'm redirecting the output of the first half of the expression to $null otherwise I'd see the entire file in addition to the last five lines.<\/p>\n

That is much more efficient. Now I don't have to get the count or length ahead of time. And if you wanted to wrap this up in a function, it is pretty simple:<\/p>\n

Function GetTail {
param([string]$file,[int]$lines)
cat $file -outvariable c >$null ; $c[($c.count-$lines)..($c.count)] <\/span><\/p>\n

}<\/span><\/p>\n

To use:<\/p>\n

GetTail log.txt 5<\/span><\/p>\n

Will return the last five lines of log.txt.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Technorati tags: PowerShell<\/a>, Scripting<\/a>, GetContent, Cmdlet<\/a>, Functions<\/a><\/span><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few followups on my recent post about Get-Content. First, you can also use the CAT alias if you’re used to the Unix world, or TYPE in place of get-content. The Get-Content cmdlet does have a parameter called -totalcount that will return the specified number of lines from the beginning of the file: cat c:\\boot.ini…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,8],"tags":[28,32],"class_list":["post-98","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-powershell","category-scripting","tag-cmdlet","tag-functions"],"yoast_head":"\nMore Fun with Get-Content • The Lonely Administrator<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jdhitsolutions.com\/blog\/powershell\/98\/more-fun-with-get-content\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"More Fun with Get-Content • The Lonely Administrator\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A few followups on my recent post about Get-Content. 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