Find which array entry is contained in specific string in powershell

Question

I have a string that I know will contain one entry from an array of strings. I'm looking for which array entry the string contains.

If I have the following variables:

$String = "This is my string"
$Array = "oh","my","goodness"

I can verify if any of the array entries exist in the string with:

$String -match $($Array -join "|")

But, this will only return true or false. I want to know which entry was matched.

-Contains seems to be going in the right direction, but that only verifies if an array contains a specific object, and I want to verify which of the array entries is contained within the string. I'm thinking something like a foreach loop would do the trick, but that seems like a fairly resource intensive workaround.

Any help is appreciated!

Santiago Squarzon · Accepted Answer · 2021-04-28 04:30:17Z

1

That's what the automatic variable $Matches is for.

See about_Regular_Expressions

$String = "This is my string"
$Array = "oh","my","goodness"

if($String -match $($Array -join "|"))
{
    $Matches
}

Returns:

PS /> 

Name                           Value
----                           -----
0                              my

This is another way you can see the matches:

# Adding "This" for the example

$String = "This is my string"
[regex]$Array = "oh","my","goodness","This" -join '|'

$Array.Matches($String)

Returns:

PS />

Groups Success Name Captures Index Length Value
------ ------- ---- -------- ----- ------ -----
{0}       True 0    {0}          0      4 This
{0}       True 0    {0}          8      2 my

edited Apr 28, 2021 at 4:30

answered Apr 28, 2021 at 4:10

Santiago Squarzon

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