Powershell to replace text in multiple files stored in many folders
$filename is a collection of System.IO.FileInfo objects.You have to loop to get the content for each file :this should do what you want :
$filename | %{ (gc $_) -replace "THIS","THAT" |Set-Content $_.fullname}
$filename is an array of filenames, and it's trying to do them all at once. Try doing them one at a time:
$fileNames = Get-ChildItem "C:\config\app*\config.xml" -Recurse | select -expand fullnameforeach ($filename in $filenames) { ( Get-Content $fileName) -replace 'this', 'that' | Set-Content $fileName}
In general, you should use the pipeline and combine the ForEach-Object and/or Where-Object CmdLets.
In your case, this would like like something more akin to:
Get-ChildItem "C:\config\app*\config.xml" -Recurse | ForEach-Object -Process { (Get-Content $_) -Replace 'this', 'that' | Set-Content $_}Which can be shortened somewhat to:
dir "C:\config\app*\config.xml" -recurse |% { (gc $_) -replace 'this', 'that' | (sc $_) }