select-string clarification

PowerShell Help
1

Hi All

im just looking for some confirmation on how the select-string command works and also on the logic behind piping data along the pipeline

im running the following command:

select-string -pattern 'violation of primary key' -path c:\temp\psproject\*.* | out-file -filepath c:\temp\psproject\output.txt

my output.txt returns the data i want but my end goal is to delete that data from the log files in c:\temp\psproject

my question is as follows, can i pipe my results from my first cmdlet to the pipeline and then have a second cmdlet delete those results from the source file( a bit like a textpad editor would do)

im not even sure a cmdlet exists that would remove that data like i wanted to do but i was just looking for confirmation that this would be possible to do or not without the use of variables(still a beginner in powershell :slight_smile:

thanks for reading me

2

AFAIK there’s no single cmdlet able to do what you’re after. And from a programming perspective you could use an approach where you search in files for lines not containing your pattern and pipe all this to be the new content of the file.

3

Hmm, something like this.

ls c:\temp\psproject | get-content | foreach {
  $filename = convert-path $_.pspath
  $newfile = $filename + '.new'
  if ($_ -match 'violation of primary key') {
    add-content output.txt "$filename,$_"
  } else { 
    add-content $newfile $_
  }
}