CODEWITHSUNDEEP
powershell
Cristian Gnda
Cristian Gnda

Reputation: 11

Extract string between two special characters in powershell

I need to extract a list with strings that are between two special characters (= and ;). Below is an example of the file with line types and the needed strings in bold. File is a quite big one, type is xml.

<type="string">data source=**HOL4624**;integrated sec>
<type="string">data source=**HOL4625**;integrated sec>

I managed to find the lines matching “data source=”, but how to get the name after? Used code is below.

Get-content regsrvr.txt | select-string -pattern "data source="

Thank you very much!

<RegisteredServers:ConnectionStringWithEncryptedPassword type="string">data source=HOL4624;integrated security=True;pooling=False;multipleactiveresultsets=False;connect timeout=30;encrypt=False;trustservercertificate=False;packet size=4096</RegisteredServers:ConnectionStringWithEncryptedPassword>

<RegisteredServers:ConnectionStringWithEncryptedPassword type="string">data source=HOL4625;integrated security=True;pooling=False;multipleactiveresultsets=False;connect timeout=30;encrypt=False;trustservercertificate=False;packet size=4096</RegisteredServers:ConnectionStringWithEncryptedPassword>

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1328

Answers (3)

Paxz
Paxz

Reputation: 3036

You can expand your try at using Select-String with a better use of regex. Also, you don't need to use Get-Content first. Instead you can use the -Path parameter of Select-String.

The following Code will read the given file and return the value between the = and ;:

(Select-String -Path "regsrvr.txt" -pattern "(?:data source=)(.*?)(?:;)").Matches | % {$_.groups[1].Value}

Pattern Explanation (RegEx):

You can use -pattern to capture an String given a matching RegEx. The Regex can be describe as such:

(?: opens an non-capturing Group

data source= matches the charactes data source=

) closes the non-capturing Group

(.*?) matches any amount of characters and saves them in a Group. The ? is the lazy operator. This will stop the matching part at the first occurence of the following group (in this case the ;).

(?:;) is the final non-capturing Group for the closing ;

Structuring the Output

Select-String returns a Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.MatchInfo-Object.

You can find the matched Strings (the whole String and all captured groups) in there. We can also loop through this Output and return the Value of the captured Groups: | % {$_.groups[1].Value}

% is just an Alias for For-Each.

For more Informations look at the Select-String-Documentation and try your luck with some RegEx.

Upvotes: 1

vonPryz
vonPryz

Reputation: 24071

Since the connectionstring is for SQL Server, let's use .Net's SqlConnectionStringBuilder to do all the work for us. Like so,

# Test data, XML extraction is left as an exercise
$str = 'data source=HOL4624;integrated security=True;pooling=False;multipleactiveresultsets=False;connect timeout=30;encrypt=False;trustservercertificate=False;packet size=4096'

$builder = new-object System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnectionStringBuilder($str)

# Check some parameters
$builder.DataSource                                                                                             
HOL4624


$builder.IntegratedSecurity                                                                                     
True

Upvotes: 1

Avshalom
Avshalom

Reputation: 8889

The XML is not valid, so it's not a clean parse, anyway you can use string split with regex match:

$html = @"
<RegisteredServers:ConnectionStringWithEncryptedPassword type="string">data source=HOL4624;integrated security=True;pooling=False;multipleactiveresultsets=False;connect timeout=30;encrypt=False;trustservercertificate=False;packet size=4096</RegisteredServers:ConnectionStringWithEncryptedPassword>
<RegisteredServers:ConnectionStringWithEncryptedPassword type="string">data source=HOL4625;integrated security=True;pooling=False;multipleactiveresultsets=False;connect timeout=30;encrypt=False;trustservercertificate=False;packet size=4096</RegisteredServers:ConnectionStringWithEncryptedPassword>
"@

$html -split '\n' | % {$null = $_ -match 'data source=.*?;';$Matches[0]} | 
% {($_ -split '=')[1] -replace ';'}

HOL4624
HOL4625

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions