Powershell and .txt format

Question

Cisco SX20 systems allow you to access their Web interface and download a backup of their configuration in a .txt file. I can open the file and manually change settings, then re-upload the file with no problems. Now, I have a Powershell script that will change certain settings within the backup file, then save it as a new .txt. When I try to upload this new file, I get an error:

"Invalid file uploaded."

I've checked to ensure my script isn't inadvertently changing any other information within the file and all the information is what it needs to be. The only difference is that the original backup file (downloaded from the Cisco Web interface) seems to use a UNIX (LF) format for readability, while the backup copy generated by Powershell uses the Windows (CR/LF) format. Is there any way my script is causing a compatibility issue with the Web interface?

$name = Read-Host 'What is the SX20 name?'
if ($name -notlike "SX20NAME[a-z , 0-9]*")
    {
        Read-Host 'Please begin naming conventions with "SX20NAME".'
        }
        else {
        $description = Read-Host 'What is the SX20 alias?'
        (Get-Content C:\Users\SX20_Backup.txt)|

Foreach-Object {$_-replace 'SX20NAME[a-z , 0-9]*' , $name}|
Foreach-Object {$_-replace 'SetAlias' , $description}|

Out-file $env:USERPROFILE\Desktop\$name.txt}

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 30 '15 at 15:23

3

Out-File defaults to UTF-16 encoding. While the encoding shouldn't really matter, lots of applications out there cannot process UTF-16 because they assume that anything containing null bytes is random binary data and not text. You can add the -Encoding parameter to Out-File to specify an encoding to write the file in:

Out-File ... -Encoding ASCII

This works if you in fact have only ASCII data. If it's Unicode, then use -Encoding UTF8 instead. For things shared with other systems you should refrain from using -Encoding Default or -Encoding OEM which are both encodings specific to your system configuration. Do not expect them to work at all with other systems.

answered Dec 30 '15 at 15:23

Joey

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Thank you, Joey! `Out-file $env:USERPROFILE\Desktop\$name.txt -Encoding UTF8}` allows the Web interface to accept the new file. However, I get a new error. The interface is rejecting the very first line in the backup file. Would I need to add a similar option to the beginning of my script as well? – Blake Dec 30 '15 at 15:54
@Blake Please post a new question with the new error. – Ansgar Wiechers Dec 30 '15 at 16:28
@Blake, this is probably because the interface stumbles over U+FEFF, which is added as the very first character to signal that the file uses UTF-8. If you have Unicode content and need UTF-8, then sadly the way is `[IO.File]::WriteAllLines("$env:USERPROFILE\Desktop\$name.txt", $content, (New-Object System.Text.UTF8Encoding $False))`. First you need to assign the variable `$content`, of course, to what your pipeline would have written to the file otherwise. – Joey Dec 30 '15 at 23:04

Powershell and .txt format

1 Answers1