PowerShell's pipe adds linefeed

Question

I\'m trying to pipe a string into a program\'s STDIN without any trailing linefeeds (unless that string itself actually ends in a linefeed). I tried googling around, bu

Answer 1

Bruteforce approach: feed binary data to process' stdin. I've tested this code on the cat.exe from UnixUtils and it seems to do what you want:

# Text to send
$InputVar = "No Newline, No NewLine,`nNewLine, No NewLine,`nNewLine, No NewLine"

# Buffer & initial size of MemoryStream
$BufferSize = 4096

# Convert text to bytes and write to MemoryStream
[byte[]]$InputBytes = [Text.Encoding]::UTF8.GetBytes($InputVar)
$MemStream = New-Object -TypeName System.IO.MemoryStream -ArgumentList $BufferSize
$MemStream.Write($InputBytes, 0, $InputBytes.Length)
[Void]$MemStream.Seek(0, 'Begin')

# Setup stdin\stdout redirection for our process
$StartInfo = New-Object -TypeName System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo -Property @{
                FileName = 'MyLittle.exe'
                UseShellExecute = $false
                RedirectStandardInput = $true
            }

# Create new process
$Process = New-Object -TypeName System.Diagnostics.Process

# Assign previously created StartInfo properties
$Process.StartInfo = $StartInfo
# Start process
[void]$Process.Start()

# Pipe data
$Buffer = New-Object -TypeName byte[] -ArgumentList $BufferSize
$StdinStream = $Process.StandardInput.BaseStream

try
{
    do
    {
        $ReadCount = $MemStream.Read($Buffer, 0, $Buffer.Length)
        $StdinStream.Write($Buffer, 0, $ReadCount)
        $StdinStream.Flush()
    }
    while($ReadCount -gt 0)
}
catch
{
    throw 'Houston, we have a problem!'           
}
finally
{
    # Close streams
    $StdinStream.Close()
    $MemStream.Close()
}

# Cleanup
'Process', 'StdinStream', 'MemStream' |
    ForEach-Object {
        (Get-Variable $_ -ValueOnly).Dispose()
        Remove-Variable $_ -Force
    }