CODEWITHSUNDEEP
powershell
Erik Reasonable Rates Darling
Erik Reasonable Rates Darling

Reputation: 625

Filtering file names with Get-Content

EDIT:

This seems to work. Hope it helps someone:

Get-ChildItem C:\Users\$env:username\Desktop\RD | 
Where-Object {$_.Name -match "^[^8]*141.txt"} | 
Foreach-Object {$_ 
                Get-Content -Path C:\Users\$env:username\Desktop\RD\$_ | 
                Out-File C:\Users\$env:username\Desktop\RD\141Master.txt
               }

I'm trying to work out filtering file names for a more explicit appending process. So I can do this:

Get-Content C:\erik\*.txt | Out-File C:\erik\whatever.txt

And all the text files append. Then I can do this:

Get-Content C:\erik\*101.txt | Out-File C:\erik\whatever.txt

And all the files with 101 in them append. But when I try something like this:

Get-Content C:\erik\^[^8]*141.txt | Out-File C:\erik\whatever.txt

I get:

Get-Content : An object at the specified path C:\Users\edarling\Desktop\RD\^[^8]*141.txt does not exist, or has been filtered by the -Include or -Exclude parameter. At line:1 char:1 + Get-Content C:\Users\edarling\Desktop\RD\^[^8]*141.txt | Out-File C:\Users\edarl ... + ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ + CategoryInfo : ObjectNotFound: (System.String[]:String[]) [Get-Content], Exception + FullyQualifiedErrorId : ItemNotFound,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.GetContentCommand

I've been trying to pipe Get-ChildItem to Get-Content, but can't quite figure it out. Any suggestions out there?

Thanks

Upvotes: 0

Views: 2782

Answers (1)

Ansgar Wiechers
Ansgar Wiechers

Reputation: 200193

Get-Content supports only globbing, not regular expressions. With the former you can only do things like this:

  • match all file names that end with 141.txt: *141.txt
  • match all file names that begin with foo and end with a d or t: foo*[dt]
  • match all file names that consist of two arbitrary characters followed by the extension .doc: ??.doc

Globbing does not allow you to form an expression to match a name that does not contain particular characters. To Get-Content your expression ^[^8]*141.txt means "a file name that begins with a caret followed by either another caret or the character 8 and ends with 141.txt".

If you need to filter by regular expression you have to use the -match operator:

Get-ChildItem 'C:\some\folder' | ? { $_.Name -match '^[^8]*141\.txt$' }

Note that in regular expressions you need to escape dots if you want to match literal dots (\.). Unescaped dots matche any character except a line feed. You should also anchor your expression on both sides. Otherwise a regular expression ^[^8]*141.txt would match not only abc141.txt, but also something like 141_txt.doc.

Upvotes: 1

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