wsl --list in powershell script, many unexpected space characters

[silverqx]

I need to wsl -l in my dotfiles, but it doesn't behave correctly, when I use this command with pipe or redirection, output looks like this:

W i n d o w s   S u b s y s t e m   f o r   L i n u x   D i s t r i b u t i o n s :


 U b u n t u   ( D e f a u l t )


 L e g a c y


 U b u n t u - t m p

I'm talking about these commands:
wsl -l | echo
wsl -l | sls ubuntu
wsl -l > file.txt

Does anybody have any idea how to workaround this problem?

[therealkenc]

but it doesn't behave correctly

Are you sure? Does your script parse the output if the string "(Default)" or an --import distribution name that is Kanji or Chinese text?

It's correct, just, well, unfortunate. You can probably get to where you want to be from Linux with:

$ wsl.exe -l | iconv -c -f utf16 -t utf8

From Powershell, I'm not qualified to repeat the Google hits.

[silverqx]

I can leave without this wsl -l check in my script for now, but would be much helpful to mark this as a bug for later investigation, if not we can close this issue.
@therealkenc thank you for advice.

[therealkenc]

It is not a bug. It is powershell's by-design behavior. And unrelated to wsl.exe, which does not output ASCII because its output is internationalized.

[riverar]

As mentioned in #4607, it is unexpected that WSL outputs multi-byte codepoints. I suspect this bug was closed too hastily. It's unclear if this even went through proper triage; it doesn't appear @therealkenc works at Microsoft...

[silverqx]

It doesn't work correctly in any console, powershell, cmd or conemu, the same problem.

But I tried it now and it works correctly in all consoles :)