Command library / Get-Content

Print a file's contents as objects

PowerShell's file reader — the same job bash's cat and cmd's type do, but each line comes back as a real object you can pipe onward. -Tail is the one every incident responder reaches for: only the last N lines, without loading a huge file.

Usage

Options and flags

• -Path FILE

  the file to read (first positional parameter)

• -TotalCount, -First, -Head N

  only the first N lines; it stops reading there, so it's instant even on a huge file

• -Tail N

  only the last N lines — doesn't need to read the whole file first

• -Wait

  keep the file open and print new lines as they're added, like tail -f (Ctrl+C to stop)

Examples

• Get-Content app.log

  Print the whole file, line by line as objects.

• Get-Content app.log -Tail 20

  Just the last 20 lines — a live log's most recent activity.

• Get-Content export.csv -TotalCount 10

  Just the first 10 lines, enough to see a file's header.

• Get-Content app.log -Wait

  Keep printing new lines as the log grows, until Ctrl+C.

Common mistakes

Related commands