-1

  1. Text file name "test.txt"

  2. Present file content

    hello!my@name$is*swaraj mohapatra
11!12#13%14$

  3. Required file content

    hello my name is swaraj mohapatra
11 12 13 14 15

  4. Output:

    This file contains 9 special characters

$content = Get-Content "test.txt"
$c = ($b.ToCharArray() -eq '!').count        //can check for only one special character
Write-Output "This file contains $c special characters"
$tab = "`t"
@(ForEach ($line in $b){$a.Replace('  ',$tab).Replace(' ',$tab).Replace('!',$tab)}) > $content
Write-Output "file content without any special char "
$b
phuclv
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Swaraj Mohapatra
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1 Answers1

1

If you wish to replace all characters that are not letters or numbers, you may do the following:

$content = Get-Content test.txt
# Matches method will match all occurrences of special characters
if ($count = [regex]::Matches($content,'[^\p{L}\p{N}]').Count) {
    Write-Output "This file contains $count special characters"
}
$UpdatedContent = Set-Content -Value ($content -replace '[^\p{L}\p{N}]',"`t") -Path test.txt -PassThru
Write-Output "File content without special characters"
$UpdatedContent

Explanation:

Since -replace uses regex matching, you can set a matching pattern and a replacement string. [^] is a character class that does not match (^) anything inside. \p{L} matches a unicode letter. \p{N} matches a unicode number. Each special character is replaced with a PowerShell tab.

If you want consecutive special characters to be replaced by a single tab rather than one tab per character, you may use '[^\p{L}\p{N}]+' in the replace expression only because we want each individual special character counted in the counting expression. The + matches one or more of the previous matched character.

If there are expected to be non-English letters that you also want to replace, you may opt for '[^a-zA-Z0-9]' as your regex match.

AdminOfThings
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