PowerShell -like formatting

Question

I am trying to test if a string is in one of two formats: Title (Year) or Title (Year) [Addl]

For the first, this works: if ($name -like "* (*)")...

For the second, this does not work: if ($name -like "* (*) [*]")...

I know the brackets make it think it is a regular expression. How do I make it not a regular expression?

Thanks for your assistance!!!

Answer 1

For Wildcard expressions in PowerShell, the escape character is the backtick `:

'Title (Year)' -like '* (*)'             # => True
'Title (Year) [Addl]' -like '* (*) `[*]' # => True

One way to test this is using [WildcardPattern]::Escape(..):

[WildcardPattern]::Escape('[]') # => `[`]

If you want to test the pattern using regular expressions you would be using the -match operator, and the escape character would be the backslash \:

'Title (Year)' -match '^\w+\s\(\w+\)$'                # => True
'Title (Year) [Addl]' -match '^\w+\s\(\w+\)\s\[\w+]$' # => True

And, as briantist's helpful comment points out, you can use [regex]::Escape(..) to escape regex special characters:

[regex]::Escape('()[]') # => \(\)\[]