Remove lines from file1 that exist in file2 in Powershell

Question

I have a file1.txt which contains:

line1
line2
line3
line4

I want to remove from file1.txt all the lines which exist in another file2.txt:

line3
line2

The result should be :

line1
line4

I tried to use this command but it works only if I have one line in file2.txt :

Get-Content C:\file1.txt | Where-Object {$_ -notmatch $(get-content C:\file2.txt)}

Note : I don't want to compare 2 files to see if they are the same.

Any idea? I'm pretty new to powershell.

Use -in instead of -match, explained in the answers here of almost the same thing: stackoverflow.com/questions/39307707/… — TessellatingHeckler
BTW to learn PS faster, use PowerShell ISE where you can debug the code and press F1 on any keyword to view the built-in help (beware it's not as complete as online articles and sometimes it shows a list of matching topics in the console, in that case select one and press F1 again). — wOxxOm

JosefZ JosefZ · Accepted Answer · 2016-09-06T09:36:16

Next code snippet shows two different ways to achieve the same result:

$filebefore="$env:TEMP\beforerestart.txt"    # change to match your circumstances
$file_after="$env:TEMP\after_restart.txt"    # ditto

### Compare-Object way
$array = Compare-Object $(Get-Content $filebefore) $(Get-Content $file_after)
$array | where {$_.SideIndicator -eq "<="} | 
              Format-Table -Property InputObject -AutoSize -HideTableHeaders

### -NotIn operator way
$(Get-Content $filebefore) | 
     Where-Object {$_ -notIn $(Get-Content $file_after)}

Remove lines from file1 that exist in file2 in Powershell

2 Answers