Select-String and Grep

PowerShell Team

Dustin Marx has a blog entry where he compares Unix/Linux, PowerShell and DOS commands.  In it he says, "If there is one Unix command I would love to have in PowerShell, it is the grep command with its regular expression support."  Well Dustin, your wish is our command.  Select-String command to be precise:

PS> Get-Help Select-String

NAME
    Select-String

SYNOPSIS
    Identifies patterns in strings.

SYNTAX
    Select-String [-pattern] <string[]> -inputObject <psobject> [-include <stri
    ng[]>] [-exclude <string[]>] [-simpleMatch] [-caseSensitive] [-quiet] [-lis
    t] [<CommonParameters>]

    Select-String [-pattern] <string[]> [-path] <string[]> [-include <string[]>
    ] [-exclude <string[]>] [-simpleMatch] [-caseSensitive] [-quiet] [-list] [<
    CommonParameters>]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION
    Identifies patterns in strings. By default, Select-String interprets the va
    lue of the Pattern parameter as a regular expression and matches input agai
    nst it. To learn more about regular expressions in Windows PowerShell, type
     get-help about_regular_expression. You can suppress the regular expression
     match by using the SimpleMatch parameter. A simple match attempts to find
    the string specified in the Pattern parameter as a substring of the input.

    The cmdlet makes it easy to search string content from files. It includes a
     Path parameter that supports wildcards and when that parameter is used, th
    e contents of the referenced files are retrieved and matched against the va
    lue of the Pattern parameter.

    Output from the cmdlet is, by default, a MatchInfo object which includes de
    tailed information about the matches. The information is most useful when t
    he input to the cmdlet is retrieved from files. The object includes propert
    ies like Filename and Line, which have the value ‘InputStream’ when the inp
    ut was not from a file. You can use the Quiet parameter to suppress the out
    put of MatchInfo objects. In that case, the resulting output becomes a bool
    ean value that is true if a match occurred and false otherwise.

    When matching file content, you can use the List parameter to stop after th
    e first match in each input file. You should use this parameter if you only
     require a single match, because it will result in faster matching commands.

There are a ton of great scenarios but here are some of the more common usages:

PS> dir . -recurse |%{ "`n*** $($_.name)"; cat $_}

*** animals.txt
dog
cat
horse
cow

*** fruit.txt
orange
apple
cherry

*** trees.txt
Elm
Maple
Oak
Dogwood
Apple

PS> Set-Alias ss Select-String

PS> ss Dog *

animals.txt:1:dog
trees.txt:4:Dogwood

PS> ss Dog * -CaseSensitive

trees.txt:4:Dogwood

PS> ss ^[cd]o *

animals.txt:1:dog
animals.txt:4:cow
trees.txt:4:Dogwood

PS> ss ^[cd]o -path * -Exclude *an*.txt

trees.txt:4:Dogwood

 

We’ve expanded Select-String in the next version with a number of additional functions.  One of my favorites is -Context which allows you to specify the number of lines  you want displayed before and after a match.  Check it out:

PS> ss oak *

trees.txt:3:Oak

PS> ss oak * -Context 1,0

  trees.txt:2:Maple
> trees.txt:3:Oak

PS> ss oak * -Context 0,1

> trees.txt:3:Oak
  trees.txt:4:Dogwood

PS> ss oak * -Context 2,1

  trees.txt:1:Elm
  trees.txt:2:Maple
> trees.txt:3:Oak
  trees.txt:4:Dogwood

And last but not least, this is PowerShell so of course we are not going to just emit text, we emit objects which

PS> ss dog * |fl *

IgnoreCase : True
LineNumber : 1
Line       : dog
Filename   : animals.txt
Path       : C:\temp\ss\animals.txt
Pattern    : dog

IgnoreCase : True
LineNumber : 4
Line       : Dogwood
Filename   : trees.txt
Path       : C:\temp\ss\trees.txt
Pattern    : dog

We should have produced an alias from grep to Select-String.

Enjoy!

Jeffrey Snover [MSFT]
Windows Management Partner Architect
Visit the Windows PowerShell Team blog at:    http://blogs.msdn.com/PowerShell
Visit the Windows PowerShell ScriptCenter at:  http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/hubs/msh.mspx

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