Use the Get-Content command in Windows PowerShell scripts
You can use Get-Content to retrieve data from a text file for use in your scripts. The information retrieved from the text file is stored in an array and each line in the text file becomes an item in the array.
The typical syntax for Get-Content is:
$computers = Get-Content C:\Scripts\computers.txt
The previous example retrieves a list of computer names from the computers.txt file. The $computers variable stores each of the computer names and can be processed. For example, you could use a ForEach construct to do some processing on each computer in the list. Over time, as the list of computers changes, the script automatically picks them up from the computers.txt file.
You can use wildcards in the path for Get-Content to obtain data from multiple files at a time. When you use wildcards for the path, you can modify the files selected by using the -Include and -Exclude parameters. When you use -Include, only the specified patterns are included. When you use -Exclude, all files are included except the patterns specified. Using wildcards can be useful when you want to scan all text files for specific content such as an error in log files.
The syntax for using -Include is:
Get-Content -Path "C:\Scripts\*" -Include "*.txt","*.log"
You can limit the amount of data that you retrieve with Get-Content by using the -TotalCount and -Tail parameters. The -TotalCount parameter specifies how many lines should be retrieved from the beginning of a file. The -Tail parameter specifies how many lines to retrieve from the end of a file. For example:
Get-Content C:\Scripts\computers.txt -TotalCount 10