How do I output text without a newline in PowerShell?

Unfortunately, as noted in several answers and comments, `Write-Host` can be dangerous and cannot be piped to other processes and `Write-Output` does not have the `-NoNewline` flag.

But those methods are the "*nix" ways to display progression, the "PowerShell" way to do that seems to be `Write-Progress`: it displays a bar at the top of the PowerShell window with progress information, available from PowerShell 3.0 onward, [see manual][1] for details.

# Total time to sleep
$start_sleep = 120

# Time to sleep between each notification
$sleep_iteration = 30

Write-Output ( "Sleeping {0} seconds ... " -f ($start_sleep) )
for ($i=1 ; $i -le ([int]$start_sleep/$sleep_iteration) ; $i++) {
Start-Sleep -Seconds $sleep_iteration
Write-Progress -CurrentOperation ("Sleep {0}s" -f ($start_sleep)) ( " {0}s ..." -f ($i*$sleep_iteration) )
}
Write-Progress -CurrentOperation ("Sleep {0}s" -f ($start_sleep)) -Completed "Done waiting for X to finish"

And to take the OP's example:

# For the file log
Write-Output "Enabling feature XYZ"

# For the operator
Write-Progress -CurrentOperation "EnablingFeatureXYZ" ( "Enabling feature XYZ ... " )

Enable-SPFeature...

# For the operator
Write-Progress -CurrentOperation "EnablingFeatureXYZ" ( "Enabling feature XYZ ... Done" )

# For the log file
Write-Output "Feature XYZ enabled"

[1]:

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"Write-Progress on MS TechNet"

Yes, as other answers have states, it cannot be done with Write-Output. Where PowerShell fails, turn to .NET, there are even a couple of .NET answers here but they are more complex than they need to be.

Just use:

[Console]::Write("Enabling feature XYZ.......")
Enable-SPFeature...
Write-Output "Done"

It is not purest PowerShell, but it works.

It may not be terribly elegant, but it does exactly what OP requested. Note that the ISE messes with StdOut, so there will be no output. In order to see this script work it can't be run within the ISE.

$stdout=[System.Console]::OpenStandardOutput()
$strOutput="Enabling feature XYZ... "
$stdout.Write(([System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetBytes($strOutput)),0,$strOutput.Length)
Enable-SPFeature...
$strOutput="Done"
$stdout.Write(([System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetBytes($strOutput)),0,$strOutput.Length)
$stdout.Close()

I cheated, but I believe this is the only answer that addresses every requirement. Namely, this avoids the trailing CRLF, provides a place for the other operation to complete in the meantime, and properly redirects to stdout as necessary.

$c_sharp_source = @"
using System;
namespace StackOverflow
{
public class ConsoleOut
{
public static void Main(string[] args)
{
Console.Write(args[0]);
}
}
}
"@
$compiler_parameters = New-Object System.CodeDom.Compiler.CompilerParameters
$compiler_parameters.GenerateExecutable = $true
$compiler_parameters.OutputAssembly = "consoleout.exe"
Add-Type -TypeDefinition $c_sharp_source -Language CSharp -CompilerParameters $compiler_parameters

.\consoleout.exe "Enabling feature XYZ......."
Write-Output 'Done.'

`Write-Host` is terrible, a destroyer of worlds, yet you can use it just to display progress to a user whilst using `Write-Output` to log (not that the OP asked for logging).

```powershell
Write-Output "Enabling feature XYZ" | Out-File "log.txt" # Pipe to log file
Write-Host -NoNewLine "Enabling feature XYZ......."
$result = Enable-SPFeature
$result | Out-File "log.txt"
# You could try{}catch{} an exception on Enable-SPFeature depending on what it's doing
if ($result -ne $null) {
Write-Host "complete"
} else {
Write-Host "failed"
}
```

$host.UI.Write('Enabling feature XYZ.......')
Enable-SPFeature...
$host.UI.WriteLine('Done')

desired o/p:
Enabling feature XYZ......Done

you can use below command

$a = "Enabling feature XYZ"

Write-output "$a......Done"

you have to add variable and statement inside quotes. hope this is helpful :)


Thanks
Techiegal

Simplest way with in-line concatenation - and while moving across to 'Write-Output' instead; e.g. 2 tab characters (string) & then a literal/verbatim (string):

Write-Output ("`t`t" + '${devArg}')

I'm not an expert by any means, but why not this:

```powershell

Write-Output "hello" | ForEach-Object { $PSItem.Trim() } | Do-Whatever
```

This maintains the pipeline semantics but just trims the new line characters before passing it on down the pipeline to whatever you need to do next. If that is writing to a file, so be it. If that is writing to the host, you can do that, but if you do write it to the host, remember to use `| Write-Host -NoNewline`

UPDATE: As per my comment below: "I see why my answer won't work.. Powershell inevitable appends a new line char as part of it's piping semantics when piping to external programs. See this: github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell/issues/5974 Therefore when I pass the trimmed text down the pipeline, the new line char will re-appear in the input."

From the [link in the comments][1], that answer includes:

Write-Output "Some text $( $var.Name )"

which worked very well for me. The `$( )` is not redundant if you need to ExpandProperty to get the individual value of Name, otherwise my output was this instead of the resolved value:

@{Name=Name; Address=Address; City=City}.Name


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