How to open a binary pipe with Powershell

Question

As far as I have read Powershell can not redirect input streams. Instead one has to use Get-Content to pipe the result to the target program. But this seems to create text streams.

I tried to pipe binary data to plink:

Get-Content client.zip | & 'C:\Program Files (x86)\PuTTY\plink.exe' unix nop

The target system 'unix' is a Debian with a fixed command in the authorized_keys file.

This are the first bytes of the file I tried to transfer:

00000000  50 4b 03 04 0a 00 00 00  00 00 6f 4a 59 50 c8 cb  |PK........oJYP..|

And this is what arrived on the target system:

00000000  50 4b 03 04 0d 0a 00 00  00 00 00 6f 4a 59 50 3f  |PK.........oJYP?|

'0a' gets replaced by '0d 0a'. I am not sure, but I suppose Get-Content does this.

How to pipe binary data with Powershell?

I installed already Powershell 6. I tried already the options -AsByteStream -ReadCount -Raw and I get may different funny results. But nothing gives my just an exact copy of the zip file. Where is the option "--stop-doing-anything-with-my-file"?

Did you try Get-Content -Path client.zip -Encoding Byte ?

Theo
– Theo

2020-02-25 11:41:29 +00:00
Commented Feb 25, 2020 at 11:41 — Theo
– Theo, Commented Feb 25, 2020 at 11:41

ceving · Accepted Answer · 2020-02-25 10:44:03Z

1

I think I got it myself. This seems to do what I want:

Start-Process 'C:\Program Files (x86)\PuTTY\plink.exe' -ArgumentList "unix nop" -RedirectStandardInput .\client.zip -NoNewWindow -Wait

answered Feb 25, 2020 at 10:44

ceving

24.2k15 gold badges120 silver badges201 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

Comments

f6a4 · Accepted Answer · 2020-02-25 11:36:43Z

0

Give this a try:

# read binary
$bytes = [System.IO.File]::ReadAllBytes('client.zip')

# pipe all Bytes to external prg
$bytes | & 'C:\Program Files (x86)\PuTTY\plink.exe' unix nop

answered Feb 25, 2020 at 11:36

f6a4

1,8021 gold badge11 silver badges16 bronze badges

1 Comment

ceving Over a year ago

This generates a text file and each line contains the decimal value of each byte of the zip file. This is one of the funny results, I mentioned in my question.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

How to open a binary pipe with Powershell

2 Answers 2

Comments

1 Comment

Your Answer

Linked

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

2 Answers 2

Comments

1 Comment

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Linked

Related