PowerShell5 index[0] to the first instance of the string, index[1] to the second instance and so on till finished on a 6800 line windows10 batch file

Question

Powershell5 script choking on special characters in a Windows 10 batch file or is my code fundamentally wrong?

Parse 6800 line Windows 10 batch file, find string {LINE2 1-9999} and replace {1-9999} with the line number the code is on, re-write the batch file. There are 54 instances of {LINE2 1-9999}. If I parse the entire batch the first 54 lines are outputed, none of which contains the string.

$lines = sls "LINE2" $env:windir\_61.bat | Select-Object -ExpandProperty LineNumber
gc $env:windir\_61.bat -OutVariable Content
$output = for ($index = 0; $index -lt $lines.count; $index++) {
$Content[$index] -replace "LINE2.*", "LINE2 $($lines[$index])"
} 
$output | sc "$env:TEMP\somebadhat.bat"

If _61.bat is:

TITLE %TIME%   NO "%zmyapps1%\*.*" ARCHIVE ATTRIBUTE   LINE2 1243 
TITLE %TIME%   DOC/SET YQJ8   LINE2 1887 
SET ztitle=%TIME%: WINFOLD   LINE2 2557 
TITLE %TIME%   _*.* IN WINFOLD   LINE2 2597 
TITLE %TIME%   %%ZDATE1%% YQJ25   LINE2 3672 
TITLE %TIME%   FINISHED. PRESS ANY KEY TO SHUTDOWN ... LINE2 4922 

Results:

TITLE %TIME%   NO "%zmyapps1%\*.*" ARCHIVE ATTRIBUTE   LINE2 1
TITLE %TIME%   DOC/SET YQJ8   LINE2 2
SET ztitle=%TIME%: WINFOLD   LINE2 3
TITLE %TIME%   _*.* IN WINFOLD   LINE2 4
TITLE %TIME%   %%ZDATE1%% YQJ25   LINE2 5
TITLE %TIME%   FINISHED. PRESS ANY KEY TO SHUTDOWN ... LINE2 6 

If _61.bat is:

TITLE %TIME%   NO "%zmyapps1%\*.*" ARCHIVE ATTRIBUTE   LINE2 1243
TITLE %TIME%   DOC/SET YQJ8   LINE2 1887
SET ztitle=%TIME%: WINFOLD   LINE2 2557
TITLE %TIME%   _*.* IN WINFOLD   LINE2 2597
TITLE %TIME%   %%ZDATE1%% YQJ25   LINE2 3672
TITLE %TIME%   FINISHED. PRESS ANY KEY TO SHUTDOWN ... LINE2 4922
:: Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.17134.345] 64-BIT
@ECHO OFF 
TITLE %TIME%   FINISHED. PRESS ANY KEY TO SHUTDOWN ... LINE2 4923

Results:

TITLE %TIME%   NO "%zmyapps1%\*.*" ARCHIVE ATTRIBUTE   LINE2 1
TITLE %TIME%   DOC/SET YQJ8   LINE2 2
SET ztitle=%TIME%: WINFOLD   LINE2 3
TITLE %TIME%   _*.* IN WINFOLD   LINE2 4
TITLE %TIME%   %%ZDATE1%% YQJ25   LINE2 5
TITLE %TIME%   FINISHED. PRESS ANY KEY TO SHUTDOWN ... LINE2 6
:: Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.17134.345] 64-BIT
@ECHO OFF

---

TITLE %TIME%   FINISHED. PRESS ANY KEY TO SHUTDOWN ... LINE2 4923

is missing.

There are 30 instances of @. For example:

SET p= & title NetFix v1.0a by Giovanni Heward (g@utahjrs.com) complete!
%PROGRAMFILES%\7-Zip\7z.exe" u -t7z -x@"%WINDIR%\_exclude7z.txt"

Is that causing the problem? What would I replace it with? Why, if i parse the entire file, that has 54 instances of the string, would it output 54 lines, none of which contains the string? Is there something fundamentally wrong with my code?

Answer 1

You're script will only parse the number of lines of your input script that contain the "LINE2 nnnn" token. So in your second input example above, out of the 9 lines of input, only 7 contain "LINE2 nnnn", so you only get the first 7 lines processed. The reason is this:

$lines = sls "LINE2" c:\temp\_61.bat | Select-Object -ExpandProperty LineNumber

This line contains an array of all the lines that contain the matching text, so $lines is an array of 7 integers. Later in your for loop, you are only iterating over that many items:

$output = for ($index = 0; $index -lt $lines.count; $index++) {

You don't really need the $lines array, just use the loop index over the content to determine the line number:

gc $env:windir\_61.bat -OutVariable Content 
$output = for ($index = 0; $index -lt $Content.count; $index++) {
$Content[$index] -replace "LINE2.*", "LINE2 $($index)"
} 
$output | sc "$env:TEMP\somebadhat.bat"

Note, you can clean up your script a bit by removing the temporary variables, by pushing all the data through the pipeline:

gc $env:windir\_61.bat | foreach -begin {$lc = 1} -process {
    $_ -replace "LINE2 \d*", "LINE2 $lc";
    $lc += 1
} | out-file "$env:TEMP\somebadhat.bat"

Answer 2

Just to visualize what Select-String returns and how to replace the linenumber in the index based file content (zdan's approach is much more efficient)

## Q:\Test\2019\02\15\SO_54712715.ps1
$FilePath = '.\_61v2.bat'
$FileContent = Get-Content $FilePath
$FileMatches = Select-String -Path $FilePath -Pattern '(?<=LINE2 )\d+\s?$'

ForEach ($FM in $FileMatches){
   "{0}:{1} [{2}=>{0}]" -f $FM.LineNumber,$FM.Line,$FM.Matches.Value
   $FileContent[$FM.LineNumber-1] = $FM.Line.Replace($FM.Matches.Value,$FM.LineNumber)
}
$FileContent | Set-Content $FilePath

Sample output:

> Q:\Test\2019\02\15\SO_54712715.ps1
1:TITLE %TIME%   NO "%zmyapps1%\*.*" ARCHIVE ATTRIBUTE   LINE2 1243 [1243=>1]
2:TITLE %TIME%   DOC/SET YQJ8   LINE2 1887 [1887=>2]
3:SET ztitle=%TIME%: WINFOLD   LINE2 2557 [2557=>3]
4:TITLE %TIME%   _*.* IN WINFOLD   LINE2 2597 [2597=>4]
5:TITLE %TIME%   %%ZDATE1%% YQJ25   LINE2 3672 [3672=>5]
6:TITLE %TIME%   FINISHED. PRESS ANY KEY TO SHUTDOWN ... LINE2 4922 [4922=>6]
9:TITLE %TIME%   FINISHED. PRESS ANY KEY TO SHUTDOWN ... LINE2 4923 [4923=>9]

and resulting file content (version 2 of above bat)

> gc .\_61v2.bat
TITLE %TIME%   NO "%zmyapps1%\*.*" ARCHIVE ATTRIBUTE   LINE2 1
TITLE %TIME%   DOC/SET YQJ8   LINE2 2
SET ztitle=%TIME%: WINFOLD   LINE2 3
TITLE %TIME%   _*.* IN WINFOLD   LINE2 4
TITLE %TIME%   %%ZDATE1%% YQJ25   LINE2 5
TITLE %TIME%   FINISHED. PRESS ANY KEY TO SHUTDOWN ... LINE2 6
:: Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.17134.345] 64-BIT
@ECHO OFF
TITLE %TIME%   FINISHED. PRESS ANY KEY TO SHUTDOWN ... LINE2 9