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writelinestofile-task.md

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title WriteLinesToFile Task
description Learn how MSBuild uses the WriteLinesToFile task to write the paths of the specified items to the specified text file.
ms.date 09/20/2018
ms.topic reference
f1_keywords
dev_langs
VB
CSharp
C++
helpviewer_keywords
WriteLinesToFile task [MSBuild]
MSBuild, WriteLinesToFile task
author ghogen
ms.author ghogen
ms.subservice msbuild

WriteLinesToFile task

Writes the paths of the specified items to the specified text file.

Task parameters

The following table describes the parameters of the WriteLinestoFile task.

Parameter Description
File Required xref:Microsoft.Build.Framework.ITaskItem parameter.

Specifies the file to write the items to.
Lines Optional xref:Microsoft.Build.Framework.ITaskItem[] parameter.

Specifies the items to write to the file. Default is the empty list.
Overwrite Optional Boolean parameter.

If true, the task overwrites any existing content in the file. Default is false.
Encoding Optional String parameter.

Selects the character encoding, for example, "Unicode". Default is UTF-8. See also xref:System.Text.Encoding.
WriteOnlyWhenDifferent Optional Boolean parameter.

If true, the target file specified, if it exists, will be read first to compare against what the task would have written. If identical, the file is not written to disk and the timestamp will be preserved. Default is false.

Remarks

If Overwrite is true, creates a new file, write the contents to the file, and then closes the file. If the target file already exists, it is overwritten. If Overwrite is false, appends the contents to file, creating the target file if it does not already exist.

In addition to the parameters listed above, this task inherits parameters from the xref:Microsoft.Build.Tasks.TaskExtension class, which itself inherits from the xref:Microsoft.Build.Utilities.Task class. For a list of these additional parameters and their descriptions, see TaskExtension base class.

Example

The following example uses the WriteLinesToFile task to write the paths of the items in the MyItems item collection to the file specified by the MyTextFile item collection.

<Project>

    <ItemGroup>
        <MyTextFile Include="Items.txt"/>
        <MyItems Include="*.cs"/>
    </ItemGroup>

    <Target Name="WriteToFile">
        <WriteLinesToFile
            File="@(MyTextFile)"
            Lines="@(MyItems)"
            Overwrite="true"
            Encoding="Unicode"/>
    </Target>

</Project>

In this example we use a property with embedded newlines to write a text file with multiple lines. If an entry in Lines has embedded newline characters, the new lines will be included in the output file. In this way, you can reference multi-line properties.

<Project Sdk="Microsoft.NET.Sdk">
  <PropertyGroup>
    <OutputType>Exe</OutputType>
    <TargetFramework>netcoreapp2.1</TargetFramework>
  </PropertyGroup>

  <Target Name="WriteLaunchers" AfterTargets="CopyFilesToOutputDirectory">
      <PropertyGroup>
        <LauncherCmd>
@ECHO OFF
dotnet %~dp0$(AssemblyName).dll %*
        </LauncherCmd>
      </PropertyGroup>

      <WriteLinesToFile
        File="$(OutputPath)$(AssemblyName).cmd"
        Overwrite="true"
        Lines="$(LauncherCmd)" />
  </Target>
</Project>

See also