Powershell encode with powershell commands

Question

I have below powershell commands,

$tmp = Get-Content 'C:\Users\username\Documents\emp_details.txt'
$tmp[0..75], ':tech emp details', $tmp[76.. ($tmp.Count -1)] | 
    Set-Content 'C:\Users\username\Documents\emp_details.txt'

which I want to encode and this entire commands as string and store it to variable and then will decode and execute it whenever I needed. But when I tried to decode using below which internally executes the Get-Content command as well.

$Bytes = [System.Text.Encoding]::Unicode.GetBytes("$tmp = Get-Content 'C:\Users\username\Documents\emp_details.txt'
$tmp[0..75], ':tech emp details', $tmp[76.. ($tmp.Count -1)] | 
    Set-Content 'C:\Users\username\Documents\emp_details.txt'")
$EncodedText =[Convert]::ToBase64String($Bytes)
$EncodedText

Any idea please to encode those commands as strings without executing those commands internally.

On another note, the first code block appears to be reading and writing to the same file. Has this worked well? — lit

lit lit · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-06T17:24:09

Phil's suggestion of making a script block is a good one. Here is how to store the command into a variable $thecmd.

$thecmd = {$tmp = Get-Content "C:\Users\$Env:USERNAME\Documents\$emp_details.txt"
    $tmp[0..75], ':tech emp details', $tmp[76.. ($tmp.Count -1)] | 
    Set-Content "C:\Users\$Env:USERNAME\Documents\emp_details_out.txt"}

The value of $thecmd will be the scriptblock text. In order to run it, use the invocation operator (&).

& $thecmd

I changed your hardcoded path to use the $Env:USERNAME variable. Also, what happens if the source text file does not have at least 75 lines?

Powershell encode with powershell commands

1 Answers