You can also do it like this: "foobar" | Out-File password.txt -Encoding ASCII -NoNewline Get-FileHash password.txt -Algorithm SHA1 del password.txt T

You can also do it like this: "foobar" | Out-File password.txt -Encoding ASCII -NoNewline Get-FileHash password.txt -Algorithm SHA1 del password.txt That's readable and intuitive, but the downside is it puts your password in a file.