Question

I’m getting errors with the code below. I’m trying to take lines in a text file that are over 180 characters and parse them to a new line. I have to take the first 22 characters and put it in from of part two since it contains inital data that’s needed on the line:

$data = get-content "C:\TestFile.txt"
$strAcct= @()
$strPart1= @()
$strPart2= @()
$strLength= @()
foreach($line in $data)
{
   if ( $line.length -gt 181)
   { $strLength = $line.length
     $strAcct += $line.substring(0,22) 
     $strPart1 += $line.substring(0,180)
     $strPart2 += $line.substring(181,$strLength)

     Add-Content "C:\TestFile-Output.txt" $strPart1
     Add-Content "C:\TestFile-Output.txt" $strAcct $strPart2



   } 
   Else {
   Add-Content "C:\TestFile-Output.txt" $line

   }

}

Answer 1

Substring takes an index, and the number of characters to take starting from that index. Your third substring bombs, because you are trying to take more characters than there are in the string. Change it to $strLength – 181, or alternatively, you can leave the second parameter out entirely, to just take the rest of the string starting from the index in the first parameter.

Change this:

$line.substring(181, $strLength) 

to this:

$line.substring(181)

or even this:

$line.substring(181, $strLength - 181)