PowerShell Replace String Case Insensitive

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In PowerShell, you often need to manipulate strings, and one common task is replacing text within a string. Sometimes, you want to perform a replacement without worrying about the case (uppercase or lowercase) of the text. Let’s learn how to do a case-insensitive string replacement in PowerShell.

To perform a case-insensitive string replacement in PowerShell, you can use the -replace operator, which is inherently case-insensitive. For example, $text = 'PowerShell'; $text -replace 'powershell', 'Bash' will output ‘Bash’. If you need to ensure case sensitivity, use the -creplace operator instead.

PowerShell Replace String Case Insensitive

PowerShell provides a -replace operator that supports regular expressions and is, by default, case-insensitive. This makes it a powerful tool for string replacement tasks.

Example:

$text = "Hello World!"
$newText = $text -replace 'world', 'Universe'
Write-Host $newText

This will output Hello Universe! even though the case of ‘world’ doesn’t match the case in the original string.

Make -replace Case Sensitive

If you need to make the -replace operator case-sensitive, you can use -creplace.

Example:

$text = "Hello World!"
$newText = $text -creplace 'world', 'Universe'
Write-Host $newText

In this case, the output will remain Hello World! because ‘world’ does not match the case of ‘World’ in the original string.

Using .Replace() Method

Another way to replace text in a string is by using the .Replace() method of a string object. However, it’s important to note that this method is case-sensitive.

To perform a case-insensitive replacement using the .Replace() method in PowerShell, you would first need to use a regular expression with the -match operator or another method to identify the text to replace.

Example of Case-Insensitive Replacement with .Replace()

Here is a complete example of “PowerShell Replace String Case Insensitive”.

$text = "Hello World!"
$pattern = 'world'
$replacement = 'Universe'

if ($text -imatch $pattern) {
    $regex = [regex]::new($pattern, 'IgnoreCase')
    $newText = $regex.Replace($text, $replacement)
    Write-Host $newText
}

This will output Hello Universe! as it uses a regular expression with the IgnoreCase option to perform a case-insensitive match and then replace.

You can see the output after I run the PowerShell script using VS code.

PowerShell Replace String Case Insensitive

Summary

To replace a string in PowerShell without considering the case:

  1. Use the -replace operator for a simple, straightforward replacement.
  2. Use -creplace if you need the replacement to be case-sensitive.
  3. For the .Replace() method, use additional steps to handle case-insensitive scenarios.

Remember that the -replace operator is your best friend for a quick and easy case-insensitive replacement in PowerShell.

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