Powershell - filenames that match two (or more) patterns

To find files in a directory that have both "foo" and "bar" in the filename, we can use:

Get-ChildItem | Where-Object {$_.Name -like "*foo*" -and $_.Name -like "*bar*"}

Is there a more elegant way to write (or query for) this?

4 Answers

Why do you consider your command inelegant? If you're just after more terse code, this might be better on Code Review.

Incidentally, I don't think that command would work.

If you want to use -like, then add wildcards:

gci | ? {$_.Name -like "*foo*" -and $_.Name -like "*bar*"}

If you don't want to use wildcards, use -match:

gci | ? {$_.Name -match "foo" -and $_.Name -match "bar"}

There are many ways to skin a cat

gci *foo* | ? {$_.Name -in (gci *bar*).Name}

I think more elegant code is subjective and really depends on your coding style. I personally prefer your line of code as it's not cryptic at all, and it's fairly compact for what it does.

How I understand the title of this question the answer would be like one of:

'*.txt','*.log' | ForEach-Object { Get-ChildItem $_ } # 'pure' Powershell
where.exe /r . *.txt *.log # external command

But for just getting files that have 'foo' and 'bar' in their names (which I consider one pattern) some obvious solutions could be:

Get-ChildItem *foo*bar* # if the order is given
Get-ChildItem ` | Where-Object Name -match 'foo.*bar|bar.*foo' # if not

Another way to do this is to use regular expressions match:

Get-ChildItem | Where-Object {$_.Name -match "(?=.*foo)(?=.*bar)"

If you are after shorter version(s), you could also abbreviate it to:

gci |? {$_.Name -match "(?=.*foo)(?=.*bar)"

Here are two possibilities:

gci | ? Name -like *foo* | ? Name -like *bar*
gci *foo* | ? Name -like *bar*

I agree with ST8 though that your version is fine.