powershellmatchingget-childitemselect-string

PowerShell move all files containg exact string in their body

This is somewhat based on:

Powershell Move Files With Matching Substrings

In that question, the concern is to move files with substrings in the file title to the subdirectory.

In my case, I want to move files that match an exact string in their body (i.e. contents of text file) to the subdirectory.

Based on the above question's answers, I have worked out:

$source = 'C:\ListOfWater\'
$destination = 'C:\ListOfWater\Seas'

Get-ChildItem $source -filter *.txt  | Select-String -List "Sea" | ForEach-Object {
Move-Item $PSItem.Path -Destination $destination
}

However, it will pick up words that match the substring, instead of 'whole word matching'.

Solution

  • Use regex for exact matching strings like:

    Get-ChildItem $source -filter *.txt  | Select-String -List "^Sea$" | ForEach-Object {
Move-Item $PSItem.Path -Destination $destination
}

    The ^ and $ matches the start and end. You can be more explicit and use word boundaries with:

    "\bSea\b"