Need to check if a string contains special characters in PowerShell? Use -match with a negated character class. It returns True as soon as one character that isn’t a letter or digit shows up: The catch is deciding what “special” means. Spaces, underscores and accented letters like é all change the answer, and the -like … Read more
To join strings in PowerShell, put the -join operator between a list and the separator you want. For two or three values, double quotes or the + operator concatenate them just as well, and -f builds a string from a template: Output: Those four cover nearly every case. The details below matter when the list … Read more
To escape double quotes in PowerShell, put a backtick in front of each one (`”) or type it twice (“”) inside a double-quoted string. Or wrap the whole text in single quotes, where a double quote needs no escaping: Output: All three lines print the same sentence. Strings are the easy part, though. Passing quotes … Read more
One of my team members struggled to write a script to find the first and last lines of a multiple-line string. I tried various methods. In this tutorial, I have explained how to get the first and last lines of a multiline string in PowerShell. To get the first and last line of a multiline … Read more
To remove whitespace from strings in PowerShell, use .Trim() for spaces at the start and end, or -replace ‘\s’, ” to strip every space, tab and line break: Which one you need depends on whether the spaces inside the text matter. I tested every example in PowerShell 7 and Windows PowerShell 5.1, including the invisible … Read more
Inside a single-quoted string, you escape a single quote in PowerShell by typing it twice: ‘Sean O”Brien’. Or wrap the text in double quotes, where an apostrophe needs no escaping at all: Output: All three lines print the same name. Which one you pick depends on the bigger rule of PowerShell single vs double quotes: … Read more
To add a new line in a PowerShell string, put `n (backtick n) inside a double-quoted string. The text after it starts on the next line: Output: That covers most scripts. Below I show the other new line options, when each one matters, and how to turn spaces into new lines. I ran every example … Read more
To remove newlines from a string in PowerShell, replace them with the -replace operator and the pattern \r?\n, which matches both Windows and Unix line breaks: In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to remove newlines from a string in PowerShell and how to convert a multiline string to a single line without leftover spaces. … Read more
To check if an array is empty in PowerShell, test its Count property. An empty array has a Count of 0, and so does a variable that holds $null: The traps are $null on the wrong side, one-item arrays that look empty, and objects with no Count in Windows PowerShell 5.1. I’ll show where PowerShell … Read more
To filter objects between two dates with PowerShell Where-Object, compare the date property against a start and an end date and join both tests with -and: That one line hides three traps: times of day on the end date, dates that are really strings, and slow filtering on big logs. I’ll walk through each with … Read more