Delete a line in file if it is empty in powershell

Question

How to delete a empty line in file?

When i searched for it , people are creating another file to move non empty lines like follows

gc c:\FileWithEmptyLines.txt | where {$_ -ne ""} > c:\FileWithNoEmptyLines.txt

Is there any way to delete the line in the source file itself?

Andrey Marchuk · Accepted Answer · 2011-12-30 14:32:04Z

4

Why can't you save it back to the same file? Split it into 2 lines:

$var = gc c:\PST\1.txt | Where {$_ -ne ""}
$var > c:\pst\1.txt

edited Dec 30, 2011 at 14:32

answered Dec 30, 2011 at 14:20

Andrey Marchuk

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2 Comments

Samselvaprabu Over a year ago

If i tried it , it delete all the contents . Redirect operator will delete the file. If i use append >> redirect , it will end up in infinite loop and file size grows humungous

Shay Levy Over a year ago

fyi, If you have a line that contains only a tab character (e.g "`t"), $_ -ne "" will not skip it

Shay Levy · Accepted Answer · 2011-12-31 09:28:48Z

3

Skip lines that match a space, a tab or a line break:

(Get-Content c:\FileWithEmptyLines.txt) | `
  Where-Object {$_ -match '\S'} | `
   Out-File c:\FileWithEmptyLines.txt

UPDATE: for multiple files:

$file = Get-ChildItem -Path "E:\copyforbuild*xcopy.txt" 

foreach ($f in $file)
{ 
    (Get-Content $f.FullName) | `
      Where-Object {$_ -match '\S'} | `
       Out-File $f.FullName
}

edited Dec 31, 2011 at 9:28

answered Dec 30, 2011 at 15:02

Shay Levy

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4 Comments

Samselvaprabu Over a year ago

buddy , i think you have missed a } . Please update it , I need to tick the answer after that

Shay Levy Over a year ago

Thanks for the heads up, fixed. I had two where-object calls and a missing brace :)

Samselvaprabu Over a year ago

buddy , when your solution is being executed with multiple files it fails .For ex: $File = Get-ChildItem -Path "E:\copyforbuild\*xcopy.txt" Foreach ($f in $File) { $var= Get-Content ($f) |` Where-Object {$_ -match '\S'} |` Out-File $f }. when i use split it two lines it works fine.

Shay Levy Over a year ago

How about this: $File = Get-ChildItem -Path "E:\copyforbuild*xcopy.txt"; Foreach ($f in $File){ (Get-Content $f.FullName) | Where-Object {$_ -match '\S'} | Out-File $f.fullname }

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