Inserting blank lines in powershell console

Question

On unix I can do a

tail -f file

And the equivalent powershell command is

gc file -Wait

However on unix I can press enter to add some blank lines (for readability) on the console while it is outputting lines, but not in powershell. Any workaround?

---

Use case: On unix I run tail -f /some/webserver/log/file and it outputs the last part of the log. I then do some http-requests and the log scrolls by accordingly. I then press enter a couple of times to get some blank space in the console, so the log entry for the next request stands out because of the blank lines above.

Answer 1

You can use `n to create a new line .

This is just a small example , if you want to modife the out put of the Get-Content command you should store the out put and then and the new line to line 10 for example then retrieve the out put.

write-host "This is an example"
write-host "`n"
write-host "just to show how to add a new line"

This example reads a file and when it get to line to in inserts a space.

$content = Get-Content C:\Dump\test.txt
foreach ($line in $content)
{   
  if ($line.ReadCount -eq 2) { Write-Host "`n$line" }
  Else{$line}

}

This is the out put

Line 1

Line 2
Line 3
Line 4
Line 5
Line 6
Line 7

Answer 2

Best way to do blank lines for me is :

"" 

If you write that in script or console you get a blank line, just two double quotes.

If you want to create for example 3 new blank lines in one shot you could do :

"" ; "" ; ""