PowerShell.MCP v1.2.6 - Enhanced Text File Operations with Automatic Encoding Detection

[yotsuda]

Enhanced Text File Operations with Automatic Encoding Detection

This release focuses on improving cmdlet naming clarity and automatic encoding detection.

✨ What's New

🔄 Renamed Cmdlets for Better Clarity

Text file cmdlets have been renamed to better reflect their functionality:

# Pattern-based text replacement (formerly Update-TextFile)
Update-MatchInFile config.txt -Contains "old" -Replacement "new"
Update-MatchInFile code.cs -Pattern "var (\w+)" -Replacement "string $1"

# Line-based replacement (formerly Set-LinesToFile)
Update-LinesInFile file.txt 10,20 -Content $newCode
Update-LinesInFile output.txt -Content "Line 1", "Line 2"

Migration Guide:

• Update-TextFile → Update-MatchInFile
• Set-LinesToFile → Update-LinesInFile

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🔧 Enhancements

🌐 Automatic Encoding Detection

All text file cmdlets now automatically detect and preserve file encoding, ensuring data integrity across different character sets:

# Automatically detects UTF-8, UTF-16, Shift-JIS, etc.
Add-LinesToFile "日本語ファイル.txt" -Content "新しい行"
Update-MatchInFile "config.ini" -Contains "設定" -Replacement "新設定"

# Encoding is preserved when modifying files
Show-TextFile "legacy_sjis.txt"  # Detects Shift-JIS
Update-LinesInFile "legacy_sjis.txt" 5 -Content "更新"  # Maintains Shift-JIS

Key Benefits:

• ✅ No manual encoding specification needed
• ✅ Preserves original file encoding automatically
• ✅ Handles multi-byte characters correctly (Japanese, Chinese, etc.)
• ✅ Supports UTF-8, UTF-16, Shift-JIS, and other encodings

🐛 Bug Fixes

UTF-8 Encoding Preservation

• Fixed issue where UTF-8 files without BOM were incorrectly getting BOM added during file modifications
• Now correctly preserves the original BOM/no-BOM attribute of UTF-8 files
• Ensures file encoding remains unchanged when editing UTF-8 content

📚 Dependencies

Added Ude.NetStandard (Universal Charset Detector)

• Integrated Ude.NetStandard 1.2.0 for accurate encoding detection
• Based on Mozilla's Universal Charset Detector
• Enables automatic detection of UTF-8, UTF-16, Shift-JIS, and other encodings
• License: Mozilla Public License 2.0 (MPL-2.0)
• Package: Ude.NetStandard on NuGet

Improved Positional Parameters

Update-LinesInFile - LineRange is now positional for cleaner syntax:

# Before
Update-LinesInFile file.txt -LineRange 10,20 -Content $newLines

# After  
Update-LinesInFile file.txt 10,20 -Content $newLines

Important: When replacing multiple lines, pass an array with matching number of elements:

# Replace lines 5-7 with three new lines (preserves line count)
Update-LinesInFile file.txt 5,7 -Content @("New Line 5", "New Line 6", "New Line 7")

# Replace lines 5-7 with single line (reduces file to fewer lines)
Update-LinesInFile file.txt 5,7 -Content "Single replacement line"

Backup Feature

All modification cmdlets support the -Backup parameter:

Update-LinesInFile file.txt 5 -Content "New" -Backup
# Creates: file.txt.YYYYMMDDHHMMSS.bak

Backup files are named with timestamp suffix, allowing multiple backup versions.

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📋 Complete Feature Set

All Text File Cmdlets

• Show-TextFile - Display with line numbers
• Test-TextFileContains - Boolean text check
• Add-LinesToFile - Insert lines
• Update-LinesInFile - Line-based replacement (renamed)
• Update-MatchInFile - Pattern-based replacement (renamed)
• Remove-LinesFromFile - Delete line ranges

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🔄 Installation & Upgrade

# New installation
Install-Module PowerShell.MCP -Force

# Upgrade existing
Update-Module PowerShell.MCP

Update MCP Configuration

1. Get new module path:

(Get-Module PowerShell.MCP).ModuleBase

2. Update claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "PowerShell": {
      "command": "C:\\Path\\To\\PowerShell.MCP\\1.2.6\\bin\\PowerShell.MCP.Proxy.exe"
    }
  }
}

3. Restart Claude Desktop

📖 Full Guide: https://github.com/yotsuda/PowerShell.MCP#quick-start

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💡 Usage Examples

# Pattern-based replacement
Update-MatchInFile config.ini -Pattern "Port\s*=\s*(\d+)" -Replacement "Port = 9000"

# Line-based replacement (cleaner syntax)
# Replace multiple lines with array (preserves line count)
Update-LinesInFile app.config 5,7 -Content @("Line 5", "Line 6", "Line 7")

# Create/replace entire file
Update-LinesInFile notes.txt -Content "Task 1", "Task 2", "Task 3"

# Multi-byte character handling (automatic encoding detection)
Add-LinesToFile "日本語.txt" -Content "🎉 絵文字も対応"

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Full Documentation: https://github.com/yotsuda/PowerShell.MCP

Questions? GitHub Discussions

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⚠ Security Notice: Provides complete PowerShell access. Use in trusted environments only.

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This discussion was created from the release PowerShell v1.2.6 - Enhanced Text File Operations with Automatic Encoding Detection.