Let's assume you want to read a large text file. Let's create one:
Get-Process | Export-CliXML $home\data.xml
(Dir $home\data.xml | Select-Object -expandProperty Length)/1MB
(Dir $home\data.xml | Select-Object -expandProperty Length)/1MB
It should be roughly 5MB in size. Now let's read it using Get-Content:
Measure-Command { Get-Content $home\data.xml }
Now, you should check this out:
Measure-Command { [System.IO.File]::ReadLines("$home\data.xml") }
You will find the second approach is 20 times faster.
