So...I like GREP and SED from my old UNIX days and am VERY happy to see that PowerShell can do the same type of functionality with a lot more power in most cases. I though some of you might like some really simple examples of how to take a text file and do GREP-ish and SED-ish actions.
GREP-ish
cat somefile.txt | where { $_ -match "expression"}
The command above will search each line of "somefile.txt" to see if it contains the regular expression "expression" and return the entire line if there is a match.
SED-ish
cat somefile.txt | %{$_ -replace "expression","replace"}
The command above will search each line of "somefile.txt" for the regular expression "expression" and replace it with the string "replace".
EXAMPLE:
==============DATA.TXT==============
Mary had a little lamb,
It's fleece was white as snow,
But the lamb made Mary mad,
So she ate it.
=================================
GREP-ish
cat DATA.TXT | where { $_ -match "Mary"}
returns the following:
Mary had a little lamb,
But the lamb made Mary mad,
SED-ish
cat DATA.TXT | % { $_ -replace "Mary","Susan" }
returns the following:
Susan had a little lamb,
It's fleece was white as snow,
But the lamb made Susan mad,
So she ate it.
================ Edit 7/14 ====================
A question came up the the other day about putting these results into another text file. Using redirection this is quite easy. Here is how it is done:
cat DATA.TXT | % { $_ -replace "Mary","Susan" } > newfile.txt
============================================
enjoy :)