Additional Spaces Inserted into Powershell Program at Runtime

Question

I'm having a "wacky" PowerShell problem that I'm hoping someone can help me resolve. It may not really be a PowerShell issue but I've hit it twice and both times using PowerShell.

Today, I downloaded PSUnit. I followed the install instructions which includes copying the profile.ps1 into my PowerShell profile directory. The first line in the file is:

$PSUnitPath = "D:\Data\PSUnit"

After completing the install, when I open my PSUnit test in the PowerShell ISE, I get the following error:

The term ' $ P S U n i t P a t h ' is not recognized as the name of a cmdlet, function, script file, or operable program. Check the spelling of the name, or if a path was included, verify that the path is correct an
d try again.
At C:\Users\sfhostingadmin.SCRUMDOMAIN\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\profile.ps1:3 char:24
+  $ P S U n i t P a t h  <<<<   =   " D : \ D a t a \ P S U n i t "   # M o d i f y   t h i s   p a t h   t o   m a t c h   y o u r   l o c a l   P o w e r S h e l l   i n s t a l l a t i o n   p a t h 
    + CategoryInfo          : ObjectNotFound: ( $ P S U n i t P a t h :String) [], CommandNotFoundException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : CommandNotFoundException

Notice, it inserted a space between all of the letters. When I open the file in a text editor, the extra spaces are not there.

I get this error when simply opening the Powershell command window too i.e. where the ISE is not involved.

I don't think this is a PSUnit issue. I had this once before on a different PowerShell program where PSUnit was not involved. The only way I got around it back then was by opening a new file, and re-typing the PowerShell program.

Have you checked to see whether this is a Unicode vs Ascii issue? — Walter Mitty
– Walter Mitty, Commented Mar 13, 2015 at 14:52

Bacon Bits · Accepted Answer · 2015-03-13 14:52:11Z

2

This is an encoding issue. The file is two-byte character encoding (e.g., UCS-2 big endian), but ISE is interpreting it as a single byte character (e.g., UTF-8). Usually this happens when the Byte Order Mark (BOM) is missing or the editor or program doesn't understand two-byte encoding.

Open the file in Notepad++, and use the Encoding menu to change it to UTF-8. UTF-8 without BOM is fine, too.

answered Mar 13, 2015 at 14:52

Bacon Bits

32.4k6 gold badges63 silver badges78 bronze badges

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

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Additional Spaces Inserted into Powershell Program at Runtime

1 Answer 1

Comments

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

Comments

Related