echo “string” > file in Windows PowerShell appends non-printable character to the file

Question

In Windows PowerShell:

echo \"string\" > file.txt

In Cygwin:

$ cat file.txt
:::s t r i         


        

Answer 1

Try echo "string" | out-file -encoding ASCII file.txt to get a simple ASCII-encoded txt file.

Comparison of the files produced:

echo "string" | out-file -encoding ASCII file.txt

will produce a file with the following contents:

73 74 72 69 6E 67 0D 0A (string..)

however

echo "string" > file.txt

will produce a file with the following contents:

FF FE 73 00 74 00 72 00 69 00 6E 00 67 00 0D 00 0A 00 (ÿþs.t.r.i.n.g.....)

(Byte order mark FF FE indicates the file is UTF-16 (LE). The signature for UTF-16 (LE) = 2 bytes: 0xFF 0xFE followed by 2 byte pairs. xx 00 xx 00 xx 00 for normal 0-127 ASCII chars