PowerShell: Read File

Get-Content (alias gc)

open and read a file, return a string or array of string, or bytes.

gc filePath

print the file content.

gc filePath -TotalCount n

get first n lines.

gc filePath -tail n

get last n lines.

gc filePath -raw

whole file as one string

gc filePath -Encoding utf8

Use utf8 encoding.

Note: Get-Content is line based. It returns a array of strings, except when -raw or -byte is used.

Here's a alternative, using .NET method:

[IO.File]::ReadAllText(file_path)

return the content of the file, as a string.