Q: check if a PScustomobject contains a certain pattern

PowerShell Help
1

Hi NG,

I got a pscustomobject name = $catalogselection with 1 property = brokercatalog

Here’s the | gm output:

TypeName: Selected.System.Management.Automation.PSCustomObject

Name MemberType Definition

Equals Method bool Equals(System.Object obj)
GetHashCode Method int GetHashCode()
GetType Method type GetType()
ToString Method string ToString()
brokercatalog NoteProperty System.String brokercatalog=MyCatalog-N01

The content of the pscustomobject is sort of this:

MyCatalog-N01-STANDARD
MyCatalog-N65-PREMIUM
…and so on.

I would like to check against this pscustomobject now whether it contains a certain pattern. I tried -match and -contains but both fail. I read in the about_Comparison_Operators and found that -match does only support strings…

My aim is to get a true or false return if I query the pscustomupject like this:

$catalogselection -contains “N01”, “PREMIUM”

My expectation = false

$catalogselection -contains “N65”, “PREMIUM”

My expectation = true

I’m really out of ideas here on howto get this solved.

Regards

Christian

2

Well, you can’t match the entire object, you have to match one of its properties.

$obj.brokerCatalog -match “whatever”

For example. The -Contains operator doesn’t do pattern matching.

3

Hi Don,

thanks for your fast reply. Well at the end of the day I just want to know if my pattern matches any of the objects in the array.

Which way should I best follow up to get this solved? When I use match I get the following:

PS $catalogselection.brokercatalog -match “N01”

PS MyCatalog-N01-STANDARD

If I try this match:

PS $catalogselection.brokercatalog -match “N01”, “STANDARD”

It returns nothing. No True and no False.

Regards

Christian

4

Not sure I understand your requirements fully, but the -match operator is interesting and I have been wanting to learn regex…

Here are some interesting results… Your example PS $catalogselection.brokercatalog -match “N01”, “STANDARD” syntax isn’t something I could find, but I think I duplicated the sentiment:

May not fit your use case, but this definitely gives me a reason to learn regex. I gave my objects two properties since it seems like a one property object would be better served by an array of strings, so I wanted it to fit what I see more.

.* - match wild string
| - OR

$test=new-object pscustomobject -property @{"broker"="blahblah";"note"="one"}
$test2=new-object pscustomobject -property @{"broker"="yadayadayada";"note"="two"}
$test3=new-object pscustomobject -property @{"broker"="whosits";"note"="three"}
$arry=@($test,$test2,$test3)
$arry
$arry -match "bla"
$arry -match "bl.*h"
$arry -match "bl|ya"
$arry -match "bl|re"
5

So, to be more specific, I think your command would be PS $catalogselection.brokercatalog -match “N01.*STANDARD” if you wanted every item that contains both substrings and
PS $catalogselection.brokercatalog -match “N01|STANDARD” if you wanted either of them.

6

Hi Greg,

thanks. So the dot notation also works if I want to match multiple values against a string array.

Regards

Christian

7

Hi Christian,

I’m definitely an amateur with the regex, so it’s important to note the limited scope of my example, but this works with a string array too. Sequence is important in this example, but I know there are ways to ignore the sequence… I’ll look for one of those, but see this example:

[E:\g.working\regex]
#$arry=@(“Blue”,“Red”,“Yellow”,“Green”,“Purple”,“Orange”,“White”,“Black”)

[E:\g.working\regex]
#$arry -match “e”
Blue
Red
Yellow
Green
Purple
Orange
White

[E:\g.working\regex]
#$arry -match “l.*e”
Blue
Purple

[E:\g.working\regex]
#$arry -match “e.*l”
Yellow

$arry=@("Blue","Red","Yellow","Green","Purple","Orange","White","Black")
$arry
$arry -match "e" # Match strings containing "e"
$arry -match "l.*e" # Match strings with "l" followed by "e"
$arry -match "e.*l" # Match strings with "e" followed by "l"