How to Replace Text with Wildcard in PowerShell

PowerShell supports the use of regular expressions, which enables you to perform text replacements with wildcard patterns.

Method 1: Use the -replace operator to replace text with wildcard patterns

$newString = $original_string -replace $pattern,$replacement_string

This example replaces the text matched by the wildcard pattern $pattern in the $original_string with the replacement string $replacement_string.

The following examples demonstrate the replacement of text with wildcard patterns in PowerShell.

Using the -replace Operator to Replace Text with Wildcard Patterns

To replace text with a wildcard pattern to match the text you want to replace in PowerShell, we can use the -replace operator with a regular expression that includes the wildcard.

This example replaces all text matching by the wildcard patterns with the “X” in a given string $original_string.

$original_string = "The numbers 1, 2, and 3"
$pattern = '[0-9]'
$new_string = $original_string -replace $pattern, 'X'

Write-Host $new_string

The output of the above PowerShell script is given below:

The $original_string stores the string. $pattern variable contains the wildcard pattern [0-9]. We have used the -replace operator to search for the given $pattern in the $original_string and replace them with the new string “X“.

Finally, the modified string $new_string is output using the Write-Output cmdlet in PowerShell.

Conclusion

I hope the above article on how to replace the text with wildcard patterns in PowerShell is helpful to you.

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