PowerShell: Working With Regular Expressions (regex)

Link to Parent: PowerShell - Deep Dive and Best Practice

There are several different ways to work with regular expressions in PowerShell and this wiki will go over some of these different methods. This wiki WILL NOT go in to
regex patterns, there are many resources on the web for that. If you need help with patterns check out the resource section.

**This wiki assumes basic regex knowledge**

    If you need help with building RegEx patterns see the Regular Expression Resources below.

Table of Contents
PowerShell Regex based operators
Case Sensitive Matching
Match
Replace
Split/Join
Switch Statement
Using the .NET regex namespace
Performance Considerations
Resources
PowerShell resources
Regular Expression Resources
See Also
Other Languages

PowerShell Regex based operators

There are several different operators that support the use of regex in them. For the most part they are fairly straight forward so this will be a quick run down on how to
use each and any neat features they might have.
Case Sensitive Matching

Each PowerShell Operator has a case sensitive version, prefixing any operator with c will make it case sensitive. They can also be prefixed with i to denote insensitive
but that is the default option. Some people use it for cleaner more descriptive code. This works with all comparison operators, not just regex based operators.
"Hello Justin" -match "justin" #true, default is insensitive
"Hello Justin" -cmatch "justin" #false, case does not match
"Hello Justin" -imatch "justin" #true, explicit case insensitivity
Match
The PowerShell Match operator will return a True or False value depending on if the source matches the provided pattern. Great for use with Where or If statements.

"The number 7 is great!" -Match "\d"

There is an automatic variable created upon a match called $Matches

"Hello Justin, Welcome" -match "hello\s(\w+), welcome"

"My name is $($matches[1])"

The $Matches variable is a collection of match results from the pattern. Index 0 is the string that was matched and after that its the match group which is anything with
in ( )

Replace

detail the use of -replace

String -Replace <regex pattern>[, <replacement string>]

Simple Replace - This is NOT a case sensitive match.

"hello world" -replace "world", "World"

Simple Remove
"hello world" -replace "world"

Regex Replace
"today is 04/13/1999" -replace "\d{2}/\d{2}/\d{4}", (get-date -f "MM/dd/yyyy")

Regex Replace Using Found matches

"justin.rich@technet.com" -replace "^(\w+)\.(\w+)@", '$1-$2@'

 Regex replace using found matches next to numbers

"jrich532" -replace "(\d)\d{2}", "`${1}23"

Split/Join

detail use of -split and -join and how they different from strings .split and .join
Switch Statement

detail the use of regex with the switch statement

Using the .NET regex namespace
There is a type accelerator for the .net regular expression name space [regex]
Performance Considerations
Depending on what sort of matching you need to do, there can be a very significant difference in the performance of regex. Patterns themselves can have an impact
on the speed as well.

Resources
List of resources to learn about Regex for PowerShell and to practice.
PowerShell resources
• Chapter 13. Text and Regular Expressions - Master-PowerShell | With Dr. Tobias Weltner - Powershell.com
• Hey, Scripting Guy! Blog talks Regex
• Recorded presentation  of Tome Tanasovski's regex talk for the UK PowerShell UserGroup
• PowerShellAdmin.com's extensive PowerShell Regex Article  by Joakim Svendsen

Regular Expression  Resources

• Expresso Regular Expression Tool
• Real-time Regex testing
• Cheat sheet and slide deck  for Tome's regular expression presentation
• Regex cheat sheet
• Regex Reference

See Also
• PowerShell Portal
• Wiki: Portal of TechNet Wiki Portals

Other Languages
• PowerShell: ��य��त अ��व्य�� (regex) क� ��थ क�य� कर�� (hi-IN)