CODEWITHSUNDEEP
powershell
user10118202
user10118202

Reputation: 119

How to -replace continuous special characters?

In PowerShell when trying to replace

"Columnname1||colunnname2||kjhsadjhj|kjsad" -replace "[||]", "','"

above command is doing

"Columnname1','','colunnname2','','kjhsadjhj','kjsad"

but I'd like to replace the exact match like below

"Columnname1','colunnname2','kjhsadjhj|kjsad"

Upvotes: 2

Views: 223

Answers (3)

user6811411
user6811411

Reputation:

Just in case your end result should be:

'Columnname1','colunnname2','kjhsadjhj|kjsad'

$string = '"Columnname1||colunnname2||kjhsadjhj|kjsad"'
$string
$String = $string -replace '^"|"$',"'" -replace '\|{2}',"','"
$string

Sample output:

"Columnname1||colunnname2||kjhsadjhj|kjsad"
'Columnname1','colunnname2','kjhsadjhj|kjsad'

Upvotes: 0

Ansgar Wiechers
Ansgar Wiechers

Reputation: 200273

Your code doesn't do what you want because your search pattern defines a character class. Square brackets in a regular expression will match exactly one occurrence of any of the enclosed characters, even if you specify a character multiple times. [||] will thus match exatly one | character.

Since you apparently don't actually want to use a regular expression match I'd recommend doing a normal string replacement via the Replace() method rather than a regular expression replacement via the -replace operator:

"Columnname1||colunnname2||kjhsadjhj|kjsad".Replace('||', "','")

If you want to stick with a regular expression replacement you must specify two literal | characters, either by escaping them, as PetSerAl suggested

"Columnname1||colunnname2||kjhsadjhj|kjsad" -replace '\|\|', "','"

or by putting each of them in its own character class

"Columnname1||colunnname2||kjhsadjhj|kjsad" -replace '[|][|]', "','"

Upvotes: 3

Mathias R. Jessen
Mathias R. Jessen

Reputation: 174485

The regex pattern [||] means "1 of | or one of |"

Change it to \|{2} to match two consecutive pipes:

"Columnname1||colunnname2||kjhsadjhj|kjsad" -replace "\|{2}", "','"

Upvotes: 1

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