How can I replace every occurrence of a String in a file with PowerShell?

Using PowerShell, I want to replace all exact occurrences of [MYID] in a given file with MyValue. What is the easiest way to do so?

Use (V3 version):

(Get-Content c:\temp\test.txt).replace('[MYID]', 'MyValue') | Set-Content c:\temp\test.txt

Or for V2:

(Get-Content c:\temp\test.txt) -replace '\[MYID\]', 'MyValue' | Set-Content c:\temp\test.txt

I prefer using the File-class of .NET and its static methods as seen in the following example.

$content = [System.IO.File]::ReadAllText("c:\bla.txt").Replace("[MYID]","MyValue")
[System.IO.File]::WriteAllText("c:\bla.txt", $content)

This has the advantage of working with a single String instead of a String-array as with Get-Content. The methods also take care of the encoding of the file (UTF-8 BOM, etc.) without you having to take care most of the time.

Also the methods don't mess up the line endings (Unix line endings that might be used) in contrast to an algorithm using Get-Content and piping through to Set-Content.

So for me: Fewer things that could break over the years.

A little-known thing when using .NET classes is that when you have typed in "[System.IO.File]::" in the PowerShell window you can press the Tab key to step through the methods there.