How to delete specific contents of a file?

Question

Hi All

Background info I need to remove a specific line within a file based on if the line below it contains x text
eg: if the below exists the delete the line above it

https://www.cardea.nhs.uk/cardea/

Line number
1 {
2 “checksum”: “d144cb6f1255ff4041579855b40de2ab”,
3 “roots”: {
4 “bookmark_bar”: {
5 “children”: [ {
6 “children”: [ {
7 “date_added”: “13249054777883609”,
8 “guid”: “95f3f891-5fbd-4dae-8cba-368c1472d894”,
9 “id”: “3”,
10 “name”: “Cardea”,
11 “show_icon”: false,
12 “source”: “import_fre”,
13 “type”: “url”,
14 “url”: “https://www.cardea.nhs.uk/cardea/”
15 }, {
16 “date_added”: “13249054777916773”,
17 “guid”: “b6d814ad-0ffe-43fc-b402-f59df0eeab12”,
18 “id”: “4”,
19 “name”: “Current Health”,
20 “show_icon”: false,
21 “source”: “import_fre”,
22 “type”: “url”,
23 “url”: “https://web.currenthealth.com/”
24 }, {

Help is much appreciated.

Answer 1

$File = 'c:\temp\x'                                 # The file to process
$SearchString = 'Carde'                             # The string to look for

if (Test-path  ($File + ".old")) {                  # Does an old file already exist?
    "A .old file already exists. Do something with it."
    return
}    

$data = Get-Content $File                             # Read in the data before we...
Rename-Item   $File -NewName ($File + ".old")         # ...rename it in case we need the original file.    

$count = $data.count - 1                              # there is no next entry when processing the last entry    
for($i = 0; $i -lt $count  ; $i++) {                  # loop thru each line except the last one 
    if ( $data[$i + 1] -match $SearchString) {        # does the next line contain the text we're looking for?
        "Removing: {0}" -f $data[$i]     
    } else { 
        $data[$i] | out-file $File -Append            # write this line out 
    }
} 
$data[$i] | out-file $File -Append                    # write out the last entry      
 

Answer 2

Hello @ancient !

Does this work for you?

Delete the line above those }, { lines

  $srcPath = "path\to\your\file"  
  $dstPath = "path\to\your\new_file"  
  
  (Get-Content -Path $srcPath -Raw) -replace '\n.*(\n\d*\s*\}(,\s*\{\n|\s*$))', '$1' |  
  Set-Content -Path $dstPath  

Deletes e.g. line 13:

  (Get-Content -Path $srcPath -Raw) -replace '\n.*(\n.*https://www\.cardea\.nhs\.uk/cardea/.*\n)', '$1' |  
  Set-Content -Path $dstPath  

Deletes line 13 and 14:

  (Get-Content -Path $srcPath -Raw) -replace '\n.*(\n.*https://www\.cardea\.nhs\.uk/cardea/.*\n)', '' |  
  Set-Content -Path $dstPath  

Best whishes

PS: I have updated my answer, hope it helps.

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If this Answer was helpful, accept and upvote it please.

Answer 3

Hi,

MotoX80's script works well on my end. Or you can try this

$file = 'D:\file.txt'  
$result = 'D:\result.txt'  
$url = 'https://www.cardea.nhs.uk/cardea/'  
$temp = $null  
Get-Content -Path $file | ForEach-Object {  
    if($_ -notmatch $url){$temp |Out-File -FilePath $result -Append}   
    $temp = $_  
}  
$temp |Out-File -FilePath $result -Append  

Best Regards，
Ian Xue

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