Vista - Remove lines from multiple text files

Hi,

Bit of a noob question - I came across this bit of code the other day:

$f=${C:\Somepath\file.txt}
$f[0]=$null
${C:\Somepath\file.txt}=$f

...and I'm trying to modify it to change all files in a certain directory:

$files = dir "C:\Files\SQL Server Sandbox\*.txt"
foreach ($file in $files)
{
$f=${$file.fullname}
$f[0]=$null
${$file.fullname}=$f
}

but get an error:

Cannot index into a null array. At C:\psh
scripts\removelinesfromtextfiles.ps1:18 char:4 + $f[0 <<<< ]

What have I done wrong?

What you're doing there is performing an implicit "get-content" on
c:\somepath\file.txt. Assuming that line 18 is your
$f[0] = $null
line, it appears that the problem is either
c:\somepath\file.txt
does not exist, or
the file has no content.

I get it to work fine on my system.

"Peter E" <ubergeek@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:09589C47-6391-4D97-A4EC-2C375910D3BE@xxxxxx

Hi Alex thanks for the reply.

I changed the loop to print the file names, here's part of the output:

C:\Files\SQL Server Sandbox\Full_Non_System_Subplan_2_20090407180004.txt
Cannot index into a null array.
At C:\psh scripts\removelinesfromtextfiles.ps1:18 char:4
+ $f[0 <<<< ]=$null
C:\Files\SQL Server Sandbox\Full_Non_System_Subplan_2_20090408060022.txt
Cannot index into a null array.
At C:\psh scripts\removelinesfromtextfiles.ps1:18 char:4
+ $f[0 <<<< ]=$null

So the files exist and I've checked they aren't empty.


"Alex K. Angelopoulos" wrote:

it doesn't work for me (PS V2).
--
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MVP: PowerShell
PowerShell blog - www.sysadmins.lv

"Alex K. Angelopoulos" <aka(at)mvps.org> rakstīja ziņojum�
"news:u$b0iPQuJHA.2596@xxxxxx"...

My mistake; I didn't know what line 18 was, and simply tried to confirm that
the implicit get-content worked. The issue is as Bob points out, the name
not being correctly parsed.

"Peter E" <ubergeek@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:6682F29F-F59C-40B1-8E27-38FA74DF267B@xxxxxx

> What have I done wrong?

"C:\Files\SQL Server Sandbox\*.txt" contains spaces, get the file's short
path instead.
${$var} needs to be expanded, use Invoke-Expression.

# try this:
$fso = new-object -c scripting.fileSystemObject
foreach ($file in dir "C:\Files\SQL Server Sandbox\*.txt") {
trap {write-verbose "$path is empty"; continue}
$path = $fso.getFile($file.fullname).shortPath
[array]$f = iex "`${$path}"
$f[0] = ''
iex "`${$path} = `$f"
}
[void][Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::releaseComObject($fso)

--
Robert