Replace string in a text document in Powershell

Question

I have a text file called "delete.txt". The content is

My name is "David", "David"

I want to replace the second "David" with "Hello". I can only replace both of them with this:

$David = Get-Content -path C:\Users\David\Documents\delete.txt 
$David -replace "David", "Hello" | Out-File C:\Users\David\Documents\delete.txt

There could be more "David"'s in the file but I just want to replace the second one.

So you might look for the comma in front of the "David" as well. Or you search for "David" followed by the end of the line. It depends how your input file looks. — Olaf
– Olaf, Commented Sep 19, 2020 at 14:50
@Olaf. Thansk this way of thinking actually solves my problem :-) But just out of curiosity is there a way to find the position of the start of the two "David"s — xhr489
– xhr489, Commented Sep 19, 2020 at 14:56

Paolo · Accepted Answer · 2020-09-19 15:13:01Z

1

You can simply do:

$David -replace '"David", "David"','"David", "Hello"' | Out-File C:\Users\David\Documents\delete.txt

answered Sep 19, 2020 at 15:13

Paolo

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xhr489 Over a year ago

This works too, thanks. The comment from from Olaf works too... Also your answer from yesterday has helped me a lot, especially the trick with parentheses

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