Blank spaces(hex 00) inserted when extracting data

Question

I'm trying to extract data from a file with select-string and a regular expression.
The data are SWIFT messages and I'm reading all files in a directory and then extracting the part I want with a regular expression which works fine, with the exception that a blank(hex 00) is inserted between all characters in the resulting file,
which causes problems later.
As far as I can see does this happen in the statement
$tempvar = (Get-Content $basePath$inputPathElement | Out-String)
but I haven't so far been able to figure out how to correct the script.
One of the rows do e.g. look like this
:28C:0/1
which in hex will be:3a 32 38 43 3a 30 2f 31 0d 0a
but in the resulting file will look
3a 00 32
00 38 00 43
00 3a 00 30
00 2f 00 31
00 0d 00 0a
00
$date = Get-Date -Format "yyyyMMdd"
$accountList =@(
                    ("123","File01.$date.DAT"),  
                    ("456","File02.$date.DAT"),
$basePath = '\\Server\Folder01\'
$archive = 'archive\'
$extracted = 'extracted\'
$inputPath = get-childitem *.DAT -path $basePath
foreach($inputPathElement in $inputPath)
    $tempvar = (Get-Content $basePath$inputPathElement | Out-String)
    foreach($element in $accountList)
        $account = $element[0]
        $output_file = $element[1]
        $regex ="(?<header>{1:.*\s)(?<Tag2>:2[0-4]:.*\s){1,}(?<Tag25>:25:$account\s\s)((?<Tag28>:28.:.*\s)|(?<Tag6x>:6\d\w*:[\d\w,]*\s\s)|(?<Tag61>:61\w*:[\d\w,\\/\s]*){1,}|(?<Tag86>:86:[\w/\s]*))*(?<Trailer>.*(?<=adm}}))"
        if($tempvar -match  $regex)
            select-string -InputObject $tempvar -Pattern $regex -AllMatches | % { $_.Matches } | % { $_.Value } > $basePath$extracted$output_file
    Move-Item  $basePath$inputPathElement -Destination $basePath$archive -Force
Any help would be appreciated.
/Frank

Answer 1

Hi,
PS defaults to using UTF-16, so that's why you get the extra hex 00.
Try changing the line
 select-string -InputObject $tempvar -Pattern $regex -AllMatches | % { $_.Matches } | % { $_.Value } > $basePath$extracted$output_file
to
 select-string -InputObject $tempvar -Pattern $regex -AllMatches | % { $_.Matches } | % { $_.Value } | Out-File $basePath$extracted$output_file -Encoding UTF8 -append
Regards,
René