Forum Discussion

Copper Contributor

May 02, 2024

Asterisk (*) wildcard at end of string not matching file

OK, I must be missing something obvious here. I perform a search for files with the string "oslo" in the name, via: Get-ChildItem *oslo* -file -recurse This produces no results. I drop the ...

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Michael_Brooks

Copper Contributor

May 07, 2024

I posted this 5 days ago and so far no one has been able to suggest anything that I might be doing wrong. Am I to suspect that this is a bug in Microsoft's code? I find that possibility hard to swallow, not because Microsoft never ship buggy code but because it's a bit too fundamental to have slipped through the testing net - the difference between a wildcard matching zero or more characters and matching one or more characters is so significant as to warrant separate characters when performing regular expression parsing (not that we're parsing regular expressions here - I'm merely highlighting how significant this nuance is). Perhaps I've made assumptions as to the syntax of this wildcard when used in the -Name parameter (it's not explicitly spelled out in the documentation, although the explanation for wildcards in the -Filter parameter does differentiate between * and ?)?

LainRobertson

Silver Contributor

May 07, 2024

Michael_Brooks

Hi, Michael.

I can't reproduce the issue you're seeing in either Windows PowerShell or PowerShell, but I can at least confirm your understanding of the asterisk wildcard is correct insofar as it means "zero or more characters".

As you've noted, it's not actually a regular expression being used here but a pattern matching implementation contained within the file system API itself, which is why the pattern matching is the same in PowerShell as the "dir" command from the command prompt (i.e. DOS command window). For this reason, it's hard to comprehend why you're seeing what you're seeing.

For posterity, I ran the following tests with identical results across all three:

Get-ChildItem -File -Filter "*xlsx*";
Get-ChildItem -File -Filter "*xlsx";
Get-ChildItem -File -Filter "*xl*sx*";

It won't provide any resolution, but it would be interesting to try the same patterns in a DOS "dir" command (example below) to see if you get the same result as in PowerShell (i.e. if the issue is PowerShell specific or something with wider reach).

Without being able to reproduce the issue, there's nothing I can really offer.

Cheers,

Lain