How Do I change a string in a specific line contained in a file preserving all other lines?

Question

I have a file that contains this information:

Type=OleDll
Reference=*\G{00020430-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}#2.0#0#..\..\..\..\..\..\..\Windows\SysWOW64\stdole2.tlb#OLE Automation
Reference=*\G{7C0FFAB0-CD84-11D0-949A-00A0C91110ED}#1.0#0#..\..\..\..\..\..\..\Windows\SysWOW64\msdatsrc.tlb#Microsoft Data Source Interfaces for ActiveX Data Binding Type Library
Reference=*\G{26C4A893-1B44-4616-8684-8AC2FA6B0610}#1.0#0#..\..\..\..\..\..\..\Windows\SysWow64\Conexion_NF.dll#Zeus Data Access Library 1.0 (NF)
Reference=*\G{9668818B-3228-49FD-A809-8229CC8AA40F}#1.0#0#..\packages\ZeusMaestrosContabilidad.19.3.0\lib\native\ZeusMaestrosContabilidad190300.dll#Zeus Maestros Contables Des (Contabilidad)

I need to change the data between {} characters on line 5 using powershell and save the change preserving all other information in the file.

Answer 1

Try Regex: (?<=(?:.*\n){4}Reference=\*\\G\{)[\w-]+

Demo

Answer 2

If the content of the {} is always the same you can do this:

(Get-Content $yourfile) -replace $regex, ('{9668818B-3228-49FD-A809-8229CC8AA40F}') | Set-Content $newValue;

Answer 3

One solution:

$Content=Get-Content "C:\temp\test.txt"
$Row5Splited=$Content[4].Split("{}".ToCharArray())
$Content[4]="{0}{1}{2}" -f $Row5Splited[0], "{YOURNEWVALUE}", $Row5Splited[2]
$Content | Out-File "C:\temp\test2.txt"

Answer 4

One approach would be to find,

(.*Reference=\*\\G{)[^\r\n}]+

and replace with,

$1any_thing_you_like_to_replace_with

RegEx Circuit

jex.im visualizes regular expressions:

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If you wish to simplify/modify/explore the expression, it's been explained on the top right panel of regex101.com . If you'd like, you can also watch in this link , how it would match against some sample inputs.

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Answer 5

You can use the -replace operator to perform a regex match and string replacement.

If there is only one pair of {} per line, you can do the following where .*? matches any non-newline character as few as possible. Since by default Get-Content creates an object that is an array of lines, you can access each line by index with [4] being line 5.

$content = Get-Content File.txt
$content[4] = $content[4] -replace '{.*?}','{new data}'
$content | Set-Content File.txt

If there could be multiple {} pairs per line, you will need to be more specific with your regex. A positive lookbehind assertion (?<=) will do.

$content = Get-Content File.txt
$content[4] = $content[4] -replace '(?<=Reference=\*\\G){.*?}','{newest data}'
$content | Set-Content File.txt

For the case when you don't know which line contains the data you want to replace, you will need to be more specific about the data you are replacing.

Get-Content File.txt -replace '{9668818B-3228-49FD-A809-8229CC8AA40F}','{New Data}' | Set-Content

If there are an encoding requirements, consider using the -Encoding parameter on the Get-Content and Set-Content commands.