Select-String

PowerShellDraft — pending expert review4 practice missions

Search text in files for a pattern

PowerShell's grep. It searches files (or piped text) for a pattern and returns each match with its file name and line number. Matching ignores case by default, and the pattern is a regular expression unless you add -SimpleMatch.

Practice Select-String

Usage

Select-String [-Pattern] <string> [-Path] <string> [-NotMatch] [-SimpleMatch] [-Context <int>]

Options and flags

-Pattern PATTERN
what to look for, as a regular expression (first positional parameter)
-Path FILE
the file(s) to search; wildcards allowed (second positional parameter)
-NotMatch
return the lines that do NOT match
-SimpleMatch
treat the pattern as plain text, not a regular expression
-Context N
also show N lines before and after each match

Examples

Select-String -Path app.log -Pattern error
Every line of app.log that mentions error, in any case.
Select-String error app.log
The same search with positional parameters: the pattern first, then the file.
Select-String -Path security.log -Pattern "Access denied" -Context 2
Each match with two lines of context on either side.

Common mistakes

Select-String app.log error Select-String error app.log

Positionally the pattern comes first and the file second; swapped, it searches a file named error for the text app.log.

Related commands

get-content get-childitem get-winevent