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I have started learning powershell a couple of days ago, and I couldn't find anything on google that does what I need so please bear with my question.
I have been asked to replace some text strings into multiple files. I do not necessarily know the extension of the possible target files and I don't know their location either. So far I have managed to recursively browse into the directory (get-ChildItem -recurse) and find the string I was looking for with get-content and select-string:
Get-ChildItem -recurse | Get-Content | Select-String -pattern "dummy" The problem is, I can see the occurences of the text I am looking for, but I don't know how to tell PS to return the path and the name for every matching files as well.
How can I get the name and location of the files that contains the expression I am looking for?
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Use ls and sls to Search a String in Multiple Files and Return the Name of Files in PowerShell. The ls command is popular to list files and directories in Unix and Unix-like operating systems. The ls command is also available in the PowerShell and functions similarly.
You can use it like Grep in UNIX and Findstr in Windows with Select-String in PowerShell. Select-String is based on lines of text. By default, Select-String finds the first match in each line and, for each match, it displays the file name, line number, and all text in the line containing the match.
If you want to list files and directories of a specific directory, utilize the “-Path” parameter in the “Get-ChildItem” command. This option will help PowerShell list all the child items of the specified directory. The “-Path” parameter is also utilized to set the paths of one or more locations of files.
When you want to extract a part of a string in PowerShell we can use the Substring() method. This method allows us to specify the start and length of the substring that we want to extract from a string.
This should give the location of the files that contain your pattern:
Get-ChildItem -Recurse | Select-String "dummy" -List | Select Path There are a variety of accurate answers here, but here is the most concise code for several different variations. For each variation, the top line shows the full syntax and the bottom shows terse syntax.
Item (2) is a more concise form of the answers from Jon Z and manojlds, while item (1) is equivalent to the answers from vikas368 and buygrush.
List FileInfo objects for all files containing pattern:
Get-ChildItem -Recurse filespec | Where-Object { Select-String pattern $_ -Quiet } ls -r filespec | ? { sls pattern $_ -q } List file names for all files containing pattern:
Get-ChildItem -Recurse filespec | Select-String pattern | Select-Object -Unique Path ls -r filespec | sls pattern | select -u Path List FileInfo objects for all files not containing pattern:
Get-ChildItem -Recurse filespec | Where-Object { !(Select-String pattern $_ -Quiet) } ls -r filespec | ? { !(sls pattern $_ -q) } List file names for all files not containing pattern:
(Get-ChildItem -Recurse filespec | Where-Object { !(Select-String pattern $_ -Quiet) }).FullName (ls -r filespec | ? { !(sls pattern $_ -q) }).FullName If you love us? You can donate to us via Paypal or buy me a coffee so we can maintain and grow! Thank you!
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