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With powershell 2.0:
write-output "abcd" >> mytext.txt
returns:
a nul b nul c nul d nul
od -c shows the nul as a true binary zero, \0 , or: a \0 b \0 c \0 d \0 (and \r \0 \n \0).
I am trying to generate some SQL, so I don't think this will do. Any ideas of what's going on and how to use write-output to just get the specified characters?
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$null is an automatic variable in PowerShell used to represent NULL. You can assign it to variables, use it in comparisons and use it as a place holder for NULL in a collection. PowerShell treats $null as an object with a value of NULL. This is different than what you may expect if you come from another language.
You can use $null to check an undefined variable. If the variable is not initialized with a value, it is undefined. This command checks if $Author is null in PowerShell. It returns the TRUE value as it is not initialized.
The Out-Null cmdlet sends its output to NULL, in effect, removing it from the pipeline and preventing the output to be displayed at the screen.
$null is one of the automatic variables in PowerShell, which represents NULL. You can use the -eq parameter to check if a string variable equals $null . It returns True if the variable is equal to $null and False if the variable is not equal to $null .
This is because write-output defaults to UTF-16 text encoding, which is 2 bytes per character. When you are dealing with text that fits into the ASCII codepage range, the 2nd byte of each character will be zero.
This is controlled by the $OutputEncoding global variable, so you could set that to ASCII.
Another option is to use the cmdlet Out-File, which has an explicit encoding parameter. I would suggest you use this instead of output redirection, because that saves you from changing your environment globally (by setting the global preference variable $OutputEncoding)
Using Out-File, and setting encoding to be ASCII, your example would look like this:
"abcd" | out-file "mytext.txt" -Encoding ASCII
Do be aware that not all characters are representable in ASCII, and you should determine whether this is an appropiate encoding for your purpose. Personally I would typically go for UTF-8, since it is ASCII equivalent when characters fall in the ASCII range from 0-127, but also handles international characters. Obligatory link about text encoding.
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