{"id":350,"date":"2014-11-15T11:59:00","date_gmt":"2014-11-15T11:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.technet.microsoft.com\/heyscriptingguy\/2014\/11\/15\/powertip-using-powershell-to-search-text-files-for-letter-pattern\/"},"modified":"2014-11-15T11:59:00","modified_gmt":"2014-11-15T11:59:00","slug":"powertip-using-powershell-to-search-text-files-for-letter-pattern","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/powertip-using-powershell-to-search-text-files-for-letter-pattern\/","title":{"rendered":"PowerTip: Using PowerShell to Search Text Files for Letter Pattern"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b style=\"font-size:12px\">Summary<\/b><span style=\"font-size:12px\">: Use Windows PowerShell to search the contents of all text files in a folder for a specific letter pattern.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2019\/02\/q-for-powertip.jpg\" alt=\"Hey, Scripting Guy! Question\" \/>&nbsp;How can I use Windows PowerShell to search the contents of a lot of files in a folder for <br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;the occurrence of a specific letter pattern?<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:30px\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2019\/02\/a-for-powertip.jpg\" alt=\"Hey, Scripting Guy! Answer\" \/>&nbsp;Use the&nbsp;<b>Select-String<\/b>&nbsp;cmdlet, and specify the pattern and the path to the files. <br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;Windows PowerShell automatically reads the contents of the text files, and it will show the path <br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;and the line number of the file that contains the pattern. Here is an example that searches <br \/>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;all text files in the c:\\fso folder for the pattern&nbsp;<b>gps<\/b>:<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left:120px\">Select-String -Pattern &quot;gps&quot; -Path c:\\fso\\*.txt<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2019\/02\/7610.Dr.ScriptoForTips.jpg\" alt=\" \" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Summary: Use Windows PowerShell to search the contents of all text files in a folder for a specific letter pattern. &nbsp;How can I use Windows PowerShell to search the contents of a lot of files in a folder for &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;the occurrence of a specific letter pattern? &nbsp;Use the&nbsp;Select-String&nbsp;cmdlet, and specify [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":596,"featured_media":87096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[356,3,45],"class_list":["post-350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scripting","tag-powertip","tag-scripting-guy","tag-windows-powershell"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"<p>Summary: Use Windows PowerShell to search the contents of all text files in a folder for a specific letter pattern. &nbsp;How can I use Windows PowerShell to search the contents of a lot of files in a folder for &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;the occurrence of a specific letter pattern? &nbsp;Use the&nbsp;Select-String&nbsp;cmdlet, and specify [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/596"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}