Replace-InFile.ps1 is a Powershell script I made to replace text in files programmatically without getting a mess with the text encodings.

Since Technet Gallery is closed, now here.

See Script Center version: Replace-InFile.ps1: Replace text in files while preserving the encoding.

Now also on Powershell Gallery as part of the SysAdminsFriends module, see here or install with

Install-Module SysAdminsFriends

Project page on github is here.

Replace-InFile.ps1 is a Powershell script I made to replace text in files programmatically without getting a mess with the text encodings.

The script detects the encoding of each processed file and writes it back with the same encoding.

all the examples assume the script is found in the path

Replaces "Mister" with "Lady" in the content of the file "Test.txt" and writes the result to result.txt:

Replace-InFile.ps1 -Pattern "Mister" -Replacement "Lady" -Path Test.txt -Quiet > result.txt

Replaces the expression "spät" with "später" in all files of the current directory and all subdirectories.

The search is case-sensitive. ASCII files are interpreted as OEM files.

The result is not written back to the files, but is output to the pipeline:

gci | Replace-InFile.ps1 -Pattern "spät" -Replacement "später" -CaseSensitive -Recurse -OEM

Replaces t at the end of the line with T in all txt files of the current directory.

The files are written in UNICODE encoding:

Get-ChildItem "*.txt" | Replace-InFile.ps1 -Pattern "t$" -Replacement "T" -Encoding UNICODE -Overwrite

Removes the expression "away" in all txt files of the current directory, preserving the time stamp of the files.

No change is made because of the switch -WhatIf:

Replace-InFile.ps1 -Pattern "away" -Path "*.txt" -Overwrite -PreserveDate -WhatIf