Store Entire Text File Contents in Variable

Question

I'd like to use PowerShell to store the entire contents of a text file (including the trailing blank line that may or may not exist) in a variable. I'd also like to know the total number of lines in the text file. What's the most efficient way to do this?

Answer 1

To get the entire contents of a file:

$content = [IO.File]::ReadAllText(".\test.txt")

Number of lines:

([IO.File]::ReadAllLines(".\test.txt")).length

or

(gc .\test.ps1).length

Sort of hackish to include trailing empty line:

[io.file]::ReadAllText(".\desktop\git-python\test.ps1").split("`n").count