Search for string in a text file recursively

PowerShell Help
1

Hi ,

I need to search for a string in a TEXT file (for Example “policy_member”) and extract the content between strings. I need to do it recursively till end of the text content.
I could use: 

Get-Content C:\input.txt
but I am not sure how to proceed.
I had written something similar in another language (as below) and was hoping I could write something similar with Powershell.

Please help.
Thank you

File_input = "C:\input.txt"
fs_Var = FileSize(File_input)
binbuf_Var = BinaryAlloc( fs_Var )
BinaryRead( binbuf_Var, File_input)
Offset_Var = 0
While @true
      Begin_String = BinaryIndexEx( binbuf_Var, Offset_Var, "", @FWDSCAN, 0) 
      if Begin_String == -1 then break
      End_String = BinaryIndexNc( binbuf_Var, Begin_String , "", @FWDSCAN) 
      Offset_Var = End_String
      Extracted_String = strtrim(BinaryPeekStr(binbuf_Var, Begin_String, End_String-Begin_String))
Endwhile
BinaryFree(binbuf_Var)
2

PowerShell doesn’t have the same string manipulation capabilities as some other scripting languages. You probably want to look into Regular Expressions; with a “capturing” expression, PowerShell’s -match operator will generate a $matches collection that contains captures substrings. You can also look into Select-String to see if it meets your needs.

3

Thanks Don. I already tried $matches but it will not help in this case.
I need to find “policy_name” and then get the corresponding “”.
There are several “policy_names” and several "policy_member"s for the “policy_name”

With this command it only gives me the “policy_name”:

$matches = Select-String -Pattern “policy_name” -Path C:\Temp\input.txt

I could search for the string , but then I will not know the corresponding “policy_member”

Thats the reason I need something like a while/for loop and get for the POSITION of the “policy_name” when I find it. Then use the POSITION to determine the start of the following “policy_member”

Thanks
Hilario

Here is the input.txt file:

    policy_name Blacklist Senders/policy_name 
    policy_member   
      sender @3.org/sender>
      sender>@Atos.com/sender>
      sender>@Ms.1and1.com/sender>
                       /policy_member 
      policy_name Safelist Senders/policy_name 
    policy_member 
      sender>@engps.com/sender>
      sender>@sl.com/sender>
      sender>@cq.com/sender>
             /policy_member policy_name Blocked Recipients/policy_name 
    policy_member 
      receiver mail08@gmail.com/receiver 
      receiver>private@persal-email.org/receiver>
      receiver>chiefreply@gmail.com/receiver>

/policy_member

4

What format is the input text or where is it generated? It almost Looks like XML?

5

Yes its XML.