Below windows powershell command helps list all files [excluding a few filenames] that contain string1
Get-ChildItem -Path "D:\Jenkins" -File -Recurse | Where-Object { $_.Name -notlike "*log*" -and $_.DirectoryName -notlike "*\\Backup\\*" } | Select-String -Pattern "string1"
I wish to enhance this command so it displays all files containing string1
but should not contain the string dislike
.
Can you please suggest?
Select-String
does not support combining positive and negative matching - you can use either positive matching (by default) or negative matching (with -NotMatch
).
The simplest solution - which assumes that each file fits into memory in full (usually a safe bet for text files) - is to read each file into memory in full with Get-Content
's -Raw
switch and use -match
, the regular-expression matching operator and its negating variant (-notmatch
):
Get-ChildItem -LiteralPath D:\Jenkins -File -Recurse |
Where-Object {
$_.Name -notlike '*log*' -and
$_.DirectoryName -notlike '*\Backup\*' -and
(
($content = $_ | Get-Content -Raw) -match 'string1' -and
$content -notmatch 'dislike'
)
}
If you do run out of memory,[1] combine two Select-String
calls as follows:
Get-ChildItem -LiteralPath D:\Jenkins -File -Recurse |
Where-Object {
$_.Name -notlike '*log*' -and
$_.DirectoryName -notlike '*\Backup\*' -and
(
($_ | Select-String -Quiet 'string1') -and
-not ($_ | Select-String -Quiet 'dislike')
)
}
If you don't mind using an advanced regex, a single Select-String
call is sufficient:
Get-ChildItem -LiteralPath D:\Jenkins -File -Recurse |
Where-Object {
$_.Name -notlike '*log*' -and
$_.DirectoryName -notlike '*\Backup\*' -and
(
$_ | Select-String -Quiet '(?s)(?<!dislike.*?)string1(?!.*?dislike)'
)
}
For an explanation of the regex and the option to experiment with it, see this regex101.com page.
[1] Given that text files are rarely so large that they wouldn't fit into memory, a potential way to avoid the out-of-memory problems is to restrict the files to search through to text files only, via their filename extensions, if feasible; e.g., you could add -Include *.txt, *.csv, ...
to the Get-ChildItem
call.