PowerShell – Matching operators – To find matching entries

PowerShell Matching operators are used to find the entries which matches or do not matches the given criteria.

Matching operators

These operators can be used on multiple operands. When we use multiple operands; the operands should be separated by a comma (“,”). Multiple operands can be used only on left side; right side is a single operand.

-like and -notlike operators

These operators finds for the matching (-like) and not matching (-notlike) entries from the given operands. -like, looks for the exact match; whereas -notlike is do the opposite.

Both of these operators, supports wildcards. When we use wildcards or strings, the entries must be enclosed in quotes (single (‘) or double (“) quotes).

PS C:\> 1 -like 1
True
PS C:\> 20, 30, 40 -like 30
30
PS C:\> "hello!" -notlike "hi!"
True
PS C:\> "Original Film" -like "*film"
True
PS C:\> ("True", "False", "Bool", "Int") -notlike "Int"
True
False
Bool

Note that, these treats strings as non-case sensitive. That said; the string “Buffer” & “buffer” are same.

-match and -notmatch operators

The -match operator looks for the matching entry; and -notmatch will do the opposite. These returns True or False depending on the given criteria. If multiple values are provided; that means, if the input is a collection; these returns the multiple values depending on the matching result.

Here are some examples;

PS C:\> 111 -match 1
True
PS C:\> "Int16", "Int32", "Int64", "Int128" -match "Int"
Int16
Int32
Int64
Int128
PS C:\> 1 -notmatch 1
False
PS C:\> "Month", "Day", "Year", "Week" -notmatch "Week"
Month
Day
Year

[..] David