You can use the following methods in PowerShell to count the total number of lines in a file:
Method 1: Count Number of Lines in File
(Get-Content "c:\users\bobbi\nba_data.csv").Length
This particular example counts the number of lines in the file named nba_data.csv.
By default, this method also counts lines that are blank in the file.
Method 2: Count Number of Non-Empty Lines in File
(Get-Content "c:\users\bobbi\nba_data.csv" | Select-string .).Length
This particular example counts only the number of non-empty lines in the file named nba_data.csv.
The following examples show how to use both methods in practice.
Example 1: Count Number of Lines in File Using PowerShell
Suppose that we have a file located at the following path:
- c:\users\bobbi\nba_data.csv
We can use the following syntax to view the contents of this file:
Get-Content "c:\users\bobbi\nba_data.csv"
The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:
We can use the following syntax to count the total number of lines in the file:
(Get-Content "c:\users\bobbi\nba_data.csv").Length
The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:
We can see that there are 11 total lines in the file.
Example 2: Count Number of Non-Empty Lines in File Using PowerShell
Suppose that we have a file located at the following path:
- c:\users\bobbi\nba_data.csv
We can use the following syntax to view the contents of this file:
Get-Content "c:\users\bobbi\nba_data.csv"
The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:
There are 13 total lines but 2 of the lines are blank.
To count only the non-empty lines in the file, we can use the following syntax:
(Get-Content "c:\users\bobbi\nba_data.csv" | Select-string .).Length
The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:
We can see that there are 11 total non-empty lines in the file.
Related Tutorials
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in PowerShell:
PowerShell: How to List Files in Directory by Date
PowerShell: How to List All Files in Directory to Text File
PowerShell: How to Delete All Files with Specific Extension
