Help filtering a list of software titles using regex

PowerShell Help
1

Hello - I’m trying to pull a list of software installed on multiple computers. I’ve part of my script block below.

Everything is working as I would expect it except for the “if ($SWDisplayName -notmatch $UnwantedSW){…”

No matter what I have tried to get the -Match or -NotMatch operator to work it won’t place nice.

If anyone has any input please let me know.

# Place holder for when this runs in the scriptblock for invoke command
$Computer= "Bob"

#List of SW titles that I'm looking to filter out
$UnwantedSWTitles= "Microsoft office","sql","exchange",".NET","C++","VMware","7-zip","Report Viewer","Sharepoint","Citrix","IIS","Silverlight","NSClient","Visual Studio","Adobe","Java","Google","Firefox","PDF","Apache"

#Converts the UnwantedSWTitles string to a regex variable 
[regex]$UnwantedSW = '^(' + (($UnwantedSWTitles|foreach {[regex]::escape($_)}) –join '|') + ')$'

#Gets a list of all x86 based software installed on the system
$SWx86 = Get-ChildItem "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall" | Get-ItemProperty

#Filters through each software title
Foreach ($SW in $SWx86){

    #Grabs the SW name (I know it's the old way of doing it but making sure it v2 compatible)
    $SWDisplayName = $SW | Select-Object -ExpandProperty displayname -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
    
    #Checks to see if the software's display name  is listed in the UnwantedSW list
    #This is what I'm having trouble filtering on
    if ($SWDisplayName -notmatch $UnwantedSW){
    
        #Pulls the info from the SW title if its display name does NOT contain any words from within the $UnwantedSWTitles 
        $Prop = @{ComputerName = $Computer;
                         SWDisplayName = $SW| Select-Object -ExpandProperty Displayname -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue;
                         SWVendor = $SW | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Publisher -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue;
                         SWVersion = $SW | Select-Object -ExpandProperty DisplayVersion -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue;
                         SWInstallDate = $SW| Select-Object -ExpandProperty InstallDate -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue}

        Write-Output $Prop
                    
    }
}
2

Why are you using a regex and not an array for your unwanted software titles?

3

Speed was the main reason but if I can make it work without Regex then I’m open to anything at this point.

4

I think there is a typo in line 14.

You are looping through $SWx64 but this is not defined in your script. In line 11 $SWx86 is defined.

5

Forgot to say thank you Christian for looking this over.

Yes, that was a typo on my end. I tested after fixing that and it still isn’t working. I’ve updated the code block above as well.

6

I’m a Regex beginner, but when I ran the process encapsulating the software names with \b…\b it worked for me.

$UnwantedSWTitles = "\bMicrosoft office\b|\bsql\b|exchange\b|\b.NET\b|\bC\+\+\b|\bVMware\b|\b7-zip\b|\bReport Viewer\b|\bSharepoint\b|\bCitrix\b|\bIIS\b|\bSilverlight\b|\bNSClient\b|\bVisual Studio\b|\bAdobe\b|\bJava\b|\bGoogle\b|\bFirefox\b|\bPDF\b|\bApache\b"
7

This worked really well. I appreciate your help with this. Had a few small tweaks but overall this is great. Thank you!!