Bijay Kumar 
To convert a UTF-8 file to ANSI in PowerShell 7.4 or later, read it as UTF-8 and write it back with -Encoding ansi: Windows PowerShell 5.1 has no ansi value and uses -Encoding Default instead, which means something completely different in PowerShell 7. Below I check the real bytes in both versions and show a … Read more
To find invalid characters in a string in PowerShell, compare it against the characters Windows doesn’t allow. For file names, IndexOfAny with GetInvalidFileNameChars returns the position of the first bad one, or -1 if the name is clean: “Invalid” depends on where the text is going, though. Below I check file names, list every bad … Read more
To convert a VHD to VHDX in PowerShell, shut down the VM and run Convert-VHD on the Hyper-V host. The new format comes from the file extension you give the destination: VHDX supports disks up to 64 TB instead of 2 TB and handles power failures better, so it’s worth converting older disks. Below I … Read more
To write a variable to a CSV file in PowerShell, put the values in a [pscustomobject] and pipe it to Export-Csv. Each property becomes a column: Piping a plain string or a hashtable gives you a surprising file instead. Below I show what goes wrong, and how to write strings, arrays, hashtables and loop results … Read more
To convert YAML to JSON in PowerShell, install the powershell-yaml module, read the file with ConvertFrom-Yaml and pass the result to ConvertTo-Json with a higher -Depth: PowerShell has ConvertTo-Json built in, but it has no YAML parser, so you need the module for real YAML files. Below I cover the module, a no-install option for … Read more
To find a carriage return in a string in PowerShell, look for the escape sequence “`r”. Contains() tells you whether it’s there, and IndexOf() tells you where: Carriage returns are invisible, so they cause some of the most confusing bugs, like two strings that look the same but don’t match. Below I make them visible, … Read more
To find the WWN number in Windows with PowerShell, run Get-InitiatorPort and filter for Fibre Channel ports. NodeAddress is the WWNN and PortAddress is the WWPN: Storage admins ask for the WWPN when they zone a switch or map LUNs to a server. Below I format the numbers the way SAN tools expect them, query … Read more
To convert a CSV file to tab-delimited with PowerShell, import it and export it again with a tab as the delimiter. In PowerShell, a tab is written “`t”: That puts quotes around every value. Below I show how to drop them in PowerShell 7, a method that works in Windows PowerShell 5.1 too, reading the … Read more
To find an element in a PowerShell array by value, use -contains to check if it’s there, IndexOf() to get its position, or .Where() to return the matching items: They behave differently with upper and lower case, duplicates and objects. Below I show each one on the same city list. The output was identical in … Read more
PowerShell shows “Missing an argument for parameter” when you type a parameter name that needs a value but give it nothing. For Get-Date -Year, read the property instead: Below are the other causes I reproduced, how to read the error record, and what changes between PowerShell 7 and 5.1. Why Get-Date -Year says Missing an … Read more