How to stop Get-Content -wait after I find a particular line in the text file using powershell? Exit a pipeline on demand

Question

I am using this below script in Powershell (Version is 5.1):

Get-Content -Path path\to\text\file\to\be\read.txt -Wait

Now this continues to read even after the file is getting no update. How can I stop after I find particular line in the text file? Is there any other way to stop this on condition?

Answer 1

You can pipe the output and use foreach to check each line, if the line equals a certain string you can use break to stop the command:

Get-Content path\to\text\file\to\be\read.txt -wait | % {$_ ; if($_ -eq "yourkeyword") {break}}

For example, if you run the command above and do the following in another shell:

"yourkeyword" | Out-File path\to\text\file\to\be\read.txt -Append

The Get-Content displays the new line and stops.

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Explanation:

| % - foreach line that is in the file or gets added to the file while the function runs

$_; - first write out the line of the foreach then do another command

if($_ -eq "yourkeyword") {break} - if the line of the foreach is equal to the keyword/line you want, stop the Get-Content