Search for RegEx string in files and return ONLY file name, path and string

Question

i am kinda stuck with this search for Regex string. The scenario is as follows:

I have a bunch of files of certain extension (*.tlt) with random content
All the files are across the subfolders of BETA folder on drive F:
Each one of the files has at least one Revision 1.234 somewhere in the content. (sometimes multiple times - only the first appearance is important)

This is what I have so far:

$files = gci f:\beta\ -Include "*.tlt" -Recurse
$results = $files |
           Select-String -Pattern 'Revision:.+.{1}[.]\d{1,3}'|
           ForEach-Object { $_.Matches } |
           select Value |
           Format-Table -GroupBy Filename

What I need is a PowerShell script that searches through the files and returns the list of files with the full path and ONLY the Revision 1.234 but not the whole line.

Well, you are currently only selecting `value` so you can't group by `Filename`. Also, you shouldn't pipe to `Format-Table` if you are going to store the results. Store the results, and then display them with `Format-Table` later if desired. If you are only using it in order to group things, use `Group-Object` instead. — TheMadTechnician, Aug 21 '18 at 22:07
Thank you for your advice. I have now marked it and up-voted for both. — Tominko, Aug 23 '18 at 07:50

Maximilian Burszley · Answer 1 · 2018-08-22T00:28:46.680

You were close, but you inevitably need to loop through your files. Note -Filter is significantly faster than -Include since it doesn't collect every object before filtering.

$fileList = Get-ChildItem -Path F:\beta -Filter *.tlt -Recurse
$results = foreach ($file in $fileList)
{
    $find = $file | Select-String -Pattern '(Revision:.+?\.\d{1,3})'
    if ($find)
    {
        @{
            Path = $file.FullName
            Rev  = $find.Matches.Groups[0].Value
        }
    }
}

mklement0 · Accepted Answer · 2018-08-22T02:07:07.650

A single-pipeline solution is possible with the help of calculated properties:

Get-ChildItem f:\beta -Filter *.tlt -Recurse | 
  Select-String -List -Pattern 'Revision:.+?\.\d{3}' |
    Select-Object @{ n='FullName'; e='Path' }, @{ n='Revision'; e={ $_.Matches.Value } }

Sample output:

FullName                              Revision
--------                              --------
/Users/jdoe/foo.tlt                   Revision: 1.234
/Users/jdoe/sub/bar.tlt               Revision: 10.235

As mentioned in TheIncorrigible1's answer, using -Filter performs much better than using -Include, because -Filter filters at the source (lets the filesystem provider do the filtering) rather than collecting all file-info objects first and then letting PowerShell do the filtering.
Select-String -List limits matching in each input file to the first match.
Each match output by Select-String is a [Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.MatchInfo] instance, which contains rich metadata about each match, such as .Path with the full input filename, and .Matches with information about what the regex (-Pattern) matched - this metadata is used to populate the output custom objects created by Select-Object via the aforementioned calculated properties.

Search for RegEx string in files and return ONLY file name, path and string

2 Answers2