How do I output lines that do not match 'this_string' using Get-Content and Select-String in PowerShell?

Question

I found a post about users that wanted to use grep in PowerShell. For example,

PS> Get-Content file_to_grep | Select-String "the_thing_to_grep_for"

How do I output lines that are NOT this_string?

score 56 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 21 '11 at 16:39

56

Select-String has the NotMatch parameter.

get-content file_to_grep | select-string -notmatch "the_thing_to_grep_for"

answered Nov 21 '11 at 16:39

manojlds

you can of course do it in a single command `select-string -path file_to_grep -notmatch "the_thing_to_grep_for"` – rob Jun 14 '17 at 10:06

Tim Pietzcker · Answer 2 · 2011-11-21T16:29:48.320

14

get-content file_to_grep | select-string "^(?!the_thing_to_grep_for$)"

will return the lines that are different from the_thing_to_grep_for.

get-content file_to_grep | select-string "^(?!.*the_thing_to_grep_for)"

will return the lines that don't contain the_thing_to_grep_for.

edited Nov 21 '11 at 16:29

answered Nov 21 '11 at 16:24

Tim Pietzcker

Sorry, I decided to move the correct/accepted answer to the select-string -notmatch version below. I personally would rather use your regexy version but for the grand majority, I thought that I should move the accepted answer to fit the nature of this platform – chrips Oct 02 '19 at 17:51
@Chrips: hey, no need to apologize. Manojlds‘ answer is definitely better. – Tim Pietzcker Oct 02 '19 at 19:54

score 5 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 22 '11 at 12:04

5

gc  file_to_grep | ? {!$_.Contains("the_thing_to_grep_for")}

which is case-sensitive comparison by the way.

answered Nov 22 '11 at 12:04

vikas368

Select-String has -CaseSensitive, which can be shorted to `sls -CS` – yzorg May 12 '23 at 01:22

3 Answers3