Powershell Out-file special characters

Question

I have a script that processes data from files and writes result based on a condition to txt. Given data are strings with words like: "Distribución" or "México". When processed, those special characters like "é" and "ó" are broken (typical white square or question mark).

How can i encode the output file to make it work with those characters? I tried encoding in Utf8, utf8 without BOM, it doesn't work. Here is to file writing line:

...| Out-file -encoding XXX .\result.txt

in XXX i tried ASCII, Utf8, nothing works :/

Which application you used to read the result file? Maybe its default font doesn't contain appropriate characters, so all you got are entity placeholders. Use a hex editor to see what's really in the result file to be sure. — vonPryz
Import the file with UTF8 encoding , process and export also with UTF8 encoding. — Adam Mnich
@AdamMnich i have a line like that to import: $FirstFile = Import-Csv -Delimiter ';' -Encoding UTF8 $FirstPath | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Url And it gives me "a parameter cannot be found that matches parameter 'encoding' ". FirstPath is path to a file — Wolwgang
I meant to say import and export with the same encoding. Are the values displayed properly in Powershell? When you import back the file to Powershell are the special characters preserved? — Adam Mnich
@AdamMnich Thanks, i was importing it in 1 encoding type and exporting in another... — Wolwgang

Spikeh Spikeh · Accepted Answer · 2017-08-17T15:32:34

Out-File will always add a BOM. It's a particularly annoying "feature" of that Cmdlet. Unfortunately - to my knowledge - there is no quick way to save a file using UTF8 WITHOUT a BOM in powershell. You can, however, leverage .Net to do this. This isn't really production ready, but here's a quick example:

$outputPath = "D:\temp.txt"
$data = "Distribución or México"
[System.IO.File]::WriteAllLines($outputPath, $data)

Wrap it in a Cmdlet, function and / or module to make it reusable. Of course you can take more control over the file encoding with .Net too.

Powershell Out-file special characters

1 Answers