How to Remove the Last Line from a File Using PowerShell

To remove the last line from a file with PowerShell, read the lines with Get-Content, drop the last one with Select-Object -SkipLast 1, and write the rest back with Set-Content:

$path = 'C:\psfaqs\Files\report.csv'

$lines = Get-Content -Path $path | Select-Object -SkipLast 1
Set-Content -Path $path -Value $lines

Get-Content -Path $path

Output:

Region,Total
West,1250
South,980

Reading into a variable first matters, as the next section shows. I ran every example in PowerShell 7.6 and Windows PowerShell 5.1, with the same results.

Don’t read and write the same file in one pipeline

The one-liner everyone tries fails. Get-Content still has the file open when Set-Content starts writing to it:

$path = 'C:\psfaqs\Files\report.csv'

try {
    Get-Content -Path $path | Select-Object -SkipLast 1 | Set-Content -Path $path -ErrorAction Stop
    "File now has $((Get-Content -Path $path).Count) lines"
}
catch { 'Failed. The file is still open for reading while Set-Content tries to write it' }

Output:

Failed. The file is still open for reading while Set-Content tries to write it

Wrap Get-Content in parentheses. PowerShell then reads the whole file before anything goes down the pipeline, so the one-liner works:

$path = 'C:\psfaqs\Files\report.csv'

(Get-Content -Path $path) | Select-Object -SkipLast 1 | Set-Content -Path $path
"Lines left: $((Get-Content -Path $path) -join ' | ')"

Output:

Lines left: Region,Total | West,1250 | South,980

Test on a copy first, since Set-Content replaces the file. Reading a file line by line covers Get-Content in more detail.

Why not use an index slice?

Many scripts use $lines[0..($lines.Count – 2)]. It breaks on a one-line file, because Get-Content then returns a single string, and the slice picks characters instead of lines:

$lines = Get-Content -Path C:\psfaqs\Files\single.txt
"Lines in file: $($lines.Count)"

"Index slice [0..(Count-2)]: $($lines[0..($lines.Count - 2)] -join ' | ')"
"Select-Object -SkipLast 1:  '$((Get-Content -Path C:\psfaqs\Files\single.txt | Select-Object -SkipLast 1) -join ' | ')'"

Output:

Lines in file: 1
Index slice [0..(Count-2)]: O | e
Select-Object -SkipLast 1:  ''

-SkipLast handles one-line and empty files correctly. If you do use a slice, wrap Get-Content in @() so you always get an array.

Remove the first and last lines

Chain -Skip 1 and -SkipLast 1 to drop a header and a footer at once, which is common in exported reports:

$path = 'C:\psfaqs\Files\export.txt'

(Get-Content -Path $path) | Select-Object -Skip 1 | Select-Object -SkipLast 1 | Set-Content -Path $path
Get-Content -Path $path

Output:

web01
web02
sql01

Change the numbers to drop more lines, like -Skip 3 for a three-line header. Microsoft documents both in the Select-Object reference.

Remove trailing empty lines

Blank or space-only lines at the end of a file are easy to miss. Load the lines into a list and remove them from the end until you reach real text:

$path = 'C:\psfaqs\Files\notes.txt'
"Before: $((Get-Content -Path $path).Count) lines"

$lines = [System.Collections.Generic.List[string]](Get-Content -Path $path)
while ($lines.Count -gt 0 -and [string]::IsNullOrWhiteSpace($lines[$lines.Count - 1])) {
    $lines.RemoveAt($lines.Count - 1)
}
Set-Content -Path $path -Value $lines

"After:  $((Get-Content -Path $path).Count) lines: $((Get-Content -Path $path) -join ' | ')"

Output:

Before: 4 lines
After:  2 lines: Line one | Line two

IsNullOrWhiteSpace treats lines with only spaces as empty too. Blank lines in the middle of the file stay where they are.

Remove the final line break

Set-Content always ends the file with a line break. Some tools treat that as an extra empty line. Join the lines yourself and add -NoNewline to leave it off:

$path = 'C:\psfaqs\Files\report.csv'
$bytes = [System.IO.File]::ReadAllBytes($path)
"Ends with a line break: $($bytes[-2] -eq 13 -and $bytes[-1] -eq 10)"

$text = (Get-Content -Path $path) -join "`r`n"
Set-Content -Path $path -Value $text -NoNewline
$bytes = [System.IO.File]::ReadAllBytes($path)
"After -NoNewline:       $($bytes[-2] -eq 13 -and $bytes[-1] -eq 10), last character: '$([char]$bytes[-1])'"

Output:

Ends with a line break: True
After -NoNewline:       False, last character: '0'

The file now ends with the last character of the text. Set-Content’s default encoding differs between versions, so add -Encoding utf8 when the file must match exactly. The Set-Content documentation has the details.

Frequently Asked Questions

Related file editing guides:

• Read a file line by line
• Remove blank lines
• Write text to a file
• Check if a file is empty