Replacing escape characters in Powershell

Question

I have a string that consists of

"some text \\computername.example.com\admin$".

How would I do a replace so my final result would be just "computername"

My problems appears to not knowing how to escape two backslashes. To keep things simple I would prefer not to use regexp :)

EDIT: Actually looks like stackoverflow is having problems with the double backslash as well, it should be a double backslash, not the single shown

It is not clear if you want trhe final output to show: some text computername or some text \\computername\admin$ — Shay Levy
– Shay Levy, Commented Feb 14, 2009 at 14:19

Steven Murawski · Accepted Answer · 2009-02-14 15:13:07Z

5

I don't think you're going to get away from regular expressions in this case.

I would use this pattern:

'Some text \\computername\admin$' -replace '\\\\(\w+)\\(\w+)\$', '$1'

which gives you

PS C:\> 'Some text \\computername\admin$' -replace '\\\\(\w+)\\(\w+)\$', '$1'

Some text computername

or if you wanted only the computername from the line:

'Some text \\computername\admin$' -replace '.*\\\\(\w+)\\(\w+)\$', '$1'

which returns

PS C:\> 'Some text \\computername\admin$' -replace '.*\\\\(\w+)\\(\w+)\$', '$1'

computername

edited Feb 14, 2009 at 15:13

answered Feb 14, 2009 at 0:38

Steven Murawski

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1 Comment

JasonMArcher Over a year ago

And if there could be additional text after that drive path, you can add '.*$' (ignore my quotes) to the end of that regular expression.

EBGreen · Accepted Answer · 2009-02-17 18:37:38Z

first, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the Regex method that is presented. However, if you are deadset against it, Check this:

$test = "some text \\computername.example.com\admin$"
$test.Split('\')[2].Split('.')[0]

Very simplistic testing shows that the split is marginally faster on my machine for what it is worth:

12:35:24 |(19)|C:\ PS>Measure-Command {1..10000 | %{'some text \\computername.example.com\admin$'.Split('\')[2].Split('.')[0]}}


Days              : 0
Hours             : 0
Minutes           : 0
Seconds           : 1
Milliseconds      : 215
Ticks             : 12159984
TotalDays         : 1.40740555555556E-05
TotalHours        : 0.000337777333333333
TotalMinutes      : 0.02026664
TotalSeconds      : 1.2159984
TotalMilliseconds : 1215.9984



12:35:34 |(20)|C:\ PS>Measure-Command {1..10000 | %{'Some text \\computername\admin$' -replace '\\\\(\w+)\\(\w+)\$', '$1'}}


Days              : 0
Hours             : 0
Minutes           : 0
Seconds           : 2
Milliseconds      : 335
Ticks             : 23351277
TotalDays         : 2.70269409722222E-05
TotalHours        : 0.000648646583333333
TotalMinutes      : 0.038918795
TotalSeconds      : 2.3351277
TotalMilliseconds : 2335.1277

Thanks EBGreen. Both worked fine, but chose your answer because it introduced me to a new element of split I had not thought of, then again I should really take the time to learn more about regex.

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