PowerShell in Depth, Second Edition

Chapter 13. Regular expressions

This chapter covers

• Regular expression syntax
• The –match operator
• Regular expressions in Select-String
• Regular expressions in the switch statement
• The REGEX object

Regular expressions are a powerful and complex language you can use to describe data patterns. Most pattern-based data, including email addresses, phone numbers, IP addresses, and more, can be represented as a “regex,” as they’re also known.

We need to set some limits for this chapter, because regular expressions are complex enough to deserve their own book. PowerShell uses industry-standard regex syntax and supports the full .NET regular expression library, but we’ll only be covering the basics. Most of our focus will be on how PowerShell ...