String manipulation

The .NET type System.String offers a wide array of methods for manipulating or inspecting strings. The following methods are case sensitive, but are in many cases faster alternatives to using regular expressions if the time it takes for a script to run is important.

Working with data held in strings is an important part of any scripting language.

Indexing into strings

In PowerShell, it is possible to index into a string the same way as selecting elements from an array. For example:

$myString = 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz' 
$myString[0]     # This is a (the first character in the string) 
$myString[-1]    # This is z (the last character in the string)

String methods and arrays

In PowerShell, some string methods can be called on an array. The method will be executed against each of the elements in the array. For example, the trim method is used against each of the strings:

('azzz', 'bzzz', 'czzz').Trim('z') 

The split method is also capable of acting against an array:

('a,b', 'c...