Regular expression-based operators

Regular expressions are an advanced form of pattern matching. In PowerShell, a number of operators have direct support for regular expressions. Regular expressions themselves are covered in greater detail in Chapter 9, Regular Expressions.

The following operators use regular expressions:

• Match: -match
• Not match: -notmatch
• Replace: -replace
• Split: -split

Match and not match

The -match and -notmatch operators return true or false when testing strings:

'The cow jumped over the moon' -match 'cow'  # Returns true 
'The       cow' -match 'The +cow'            # Returns true 

In the preceding example, the + symbol is reserved; it indicates that The is followed...