32. Regular Expressions

Note

The below information is extensively based in information taken from the PowerShell® Notes for Professionals book. I plan to extend this information based on my day to day usage of the language.

32.1: Single match

You can quickly determine if a text includes a specific pattern using Regex. There are multiple ways to work with Regex in PowerShell.

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#Sample text
$text = @"
  This is (a) sample
  text, this is
  a (sample text)
"@

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#Sample pattern: Content wrapped in ()
$pattern = '\(.*?\)'

Using the -Match operator

To determine if a string matches a pattern using the built-in -matches operator, use the syntax 'input' -match 'pattern'. This will return true or false depending on the result of the search. If there was match you can view the match and groups (if defined in pattern) by accessing the $Matches-variable.

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$text -match $pattern
True

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$Matches

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Name Value
---- -----
0 (a)

You can also use -match to filter through an array of strings and only return the strings containing a match.

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$textarray = @"
  This is (a) sample
  text, this is
  a (sample text)
"@ - split " `n "

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$textarray -match $pattern
This is (a) sample
a (sample text)

Version ≥ 2.0

Using Select-String

PowerShell 2.0 introduced a new cmdlet for searching through text using regex. It returns a MatchInfo object per textinput that contains a match. You can access it's properties to find matching groups etc.

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$m = Select-String -InputObject $text -Pattern $pattern

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$m

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This is (a) sample
text, this is
a (sample text)

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$m | Format-List *

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IgnoreCase : True
LineNumber : 1
Line : This is (a) sample
text, this is
a (sample text)
Filename : InputStream
Path : InputStream
Pattern : \(.*?\)
Context :
Matches : {(a)}

Like -match, Select-String can also be used to filter through an array of strings by piping an array to it. It creates a MatchInfo-object per string that includes a match.

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$textarray | Select-String -Pattern $pattern

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This is (a) sample
a (sample text)

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#You can also access the matches, groups etc.
$textarray | Select-String -Pattern $pattern | fl *

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IgnoreCase : True
LineNumber : 1
Line : This is (a) sample
Filename : InputStream
Path : InputStream
Pattern : \(.*?\)
Context :
Matches : {(a)}

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IgnoreCase : True
LineNumber : 3
Line : a (sample text)
Filename : InputStream
Path : InputStream
Pattern : \(.*?\)
Context :
Matches : {(sample text)}

Select-String can also search using a normal text-pattern (no regex) by adding the -SimpleMatch switch.

Using [RegEx]::Match()

You can also use the static Match() method available in the .NET [RegEx]-class.

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[regex]::Match($text,$pattern)

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Groups : {(a)}
Success : True
Captures : {(a)}
Index : 8
Length : 3
Value : (a)

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[regex]::Match($text,$pattern) | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Value
(a)

32.2: Replace

A common task for regex is to replace text that matches a pattern with a new value.

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#Sample text
$text = @"
  This is (a) sample
  text, this is
  a (sample text)
"@

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#Sample pattern: Text wrapped in ()
$pattern = '\(.*?\)'

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#Replace matches with:
$newvalue = 'test'

Using -Replace operator

The -replace operator in PowerShell can be used to replace text matching a pattern with a new value using the syntax 'input' -replace 'pattern', 'newvalue'.

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$text -replace $pattern, $newvalue
This is test sample
text, this is
a test

Using [RegEx]::Replace() method

Replacing matches can also be done using the Replace() method in the [RegEx] .NET class.

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[regex]::Replace($text, $pattern, 'test')

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This is test sample
text, this is
a test

32.3: Replace text with dynamic value using a MatchEvalutor

Sometimes you need to replace a value matching a pattern with a new value that's based on that specific match, making it impossible to predict the new value. For these types of scenarios, a MatchEvaluator can be very useful.

In PowerShell, a MatchEvaluator is as simple as a scriptblock with a single parameter that contains a Match-object for the current match. The output of the action will be the new value for that specific match. MatchEvalutor can be used with the [Regex]::Replace() static method.

Example : Replacing the text inside () with its length

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#Sample text
$text = @"
  This is (a) sample
  text, this is
  a (sample text)
"@

#Sample pattern: Content wrapped in ()
$pattern = '(?<=\().*?(?=\))'

$MatchEvalutor = {

param($match)

#Replace content with length of content
$match.Value.Length
}

Output:

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[regex]::Replace($text, $pattern, $MatchEvalutor)

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This is 1 sample
text, this is
a 11

Example: Make sample upper-case

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#Sample pattern: "Sample"
$pattern = 'sample'

$MatchEvalutor = {
param($match)

#Return match in upper-case
$match.Value.ToUpper()
}

Output:

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[regex]::Replace($text, $pattern, $MatchEvalutor)

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This is (a) SAMPLE
text, this is
a (SAMPLE text)

32.4: Escape special characters

A regex-pattern uses many special characters to describe a pattern. Ex.,. means "any character", + is "one or more" etc.

To use these characters, as a .,+ etc., in a pattern, you need to escape them to remove their special meaning. This is done by using the escape character which is a backslash in regex. Example: To search for +, you would use the pattern +.

It can be hard to remember all special characters in regex, so to escape every special character in a string you want to search for, you could use the [RegEx]::Escape("input") method.

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[regex]::Escape("(foo)")

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\(foo\)

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[regex]::Escape("1+1.2=2.2")

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1 \+ 1 \.2= 2 \.2

32.5: Multiple matches

There are multiple ways to find all matches for a pattern in a text.

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#Sample text
$text = @"
  This is (a) sample
  text, this is
  a (sample text)
"@

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#Sample pattern: Content wrapped in ()
$pattern = '\(.*?\)'

Using Select-String

You can find all matches (global match) by adding the -AllMatches switch to Select-String.

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$m = Select-String -InputObject $text -Pattern $pattern - AllMatches

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$m | Format-List *

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IgnoreCase : True
LineNumber : 1
Line : This is (a) sample
text, this is
a (sample text)
Filename : InputStream
Path : InputStream
Pattern : \(.*?\)
Context :
Matches : {(a), (sample text)}

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#List all matches
$m.Matches

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Groups : {(a)}
Success : True
Captures : {(a)}
Index : 8
Length : 3
Value : (a)

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Groups : {(sample text)}
Success : True
Captures : {(sample text)}
Index : 37
Length : 13
Value : (sample text)

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#Get matched text
$m.Matches | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Value
(a)
(sample text)

Using [RegEx]::Matches()

The Matches() method in the .NET `[regex]-class can also be used to do a global search for multiple matches.

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[regex]::Matches($text,$pattern)

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Groups : {(a)}
Success : True
Captures : {(a)}
Index : 8
Length : 3
Value : (a)

Groups : {(sample text)}
Success : True
Captures : {(sample text)}
Index : 37
Length : 13
Value : (sample text)

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[regex]::Matches($text,$pattern) | **Select-Object** _-ExpandProperty_ Value

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(a)
(sample text)