Using PowerShell to search a folder of text files for a specific pattern

Fred_Elmendorf 

Hi, Fred.

Something like the example below will suffice.

You do not have to worry about commas being in the file names as the output from Export-Csv encloses the values in double quotes, meaning the commas will not interfere with the CSV/Excel formatting.

Get-ChildItem -Path "D:\Data\Temp\*" -Filter "*.inf" |
    ForEach-Object {
        $File = $_;
        if ((Get-Content -Path ($_.FullName) -Raw) -match "T200($|[^0-9])") {
            [PSCustomObject] @{
                Filename = $File.FullName;
            }
        }
    } |
    Export-Csv -NoTypeInformation -Path "D:\Data\Temp\blah.csv"

Since .inf files are relatively small (in modern day terms), I've used the -Raw parameter within the call to Get-Content to minimise unnecessary repetitive calls to the "-match" function but if your .inf files are many megabytes in size, you could remove this.

I've also put a small pattern match after the T200 to exclude potential unintentional sub-matches, such as you might otherwise get with T200 being a substring of T2000. Again, change this as you see fit.

Cheers,

Lain