I am trying to copy csv file contents and append to a text file. The copying and appending works, but the appended format is weird.
This is the command I use:
Get-Content -Path myfile1.csv | Select-object -skip 1 | Out-File mynewfile.txt -Append
The appended text looks like this when opened in notepad:
1 0 2 3 8 9, 1, A B C, P 2 instead of
102389,1,ABC,P2 There's a space between every character. Just renaming the .csv to .txt didn't help.
Try using Add-Content cmdlet:
The Add-Content cmdlet appends content to a specified item or file. You can specify the content by typing the content in the command or by specifying an object that contains the content.
Get-Content -Path myfile1.csv | Select-object -skip 1 | Add-Content mynewfile.txt In PowerShell 5.1, the default encoding for Out-File is unicode (UTF16-LE), whereas in PowerShell 7.x the default encoding is utf8NoBOM.
Apparently, your input file is encoded differently, like with ASCII or UTF-8. and when adding UTF16-LE text to it, the result is what you experience.
Out-File has an -Encoding parameter, so you can fix your code by appending -Encoding default OR by using Add-Content instead of Out-File.
Encoding Default is the encoding that corresponds to the system's active code page (usually ANSI)
Add-Content also has a parameter -Encoding. In PowerShell 5.1 it defaults to Default. In PowerShell 7.x the default encoding is utf8NoBOM.
