Could regex be used in this PowerShell script?

user_3657564 0
Viewed 111

I have the following code, used to remove spaces and other characters from a string $m, and replace them with periods ('.'):

Function CleanupMessage([string]$m) {
  $m = $m.Replace(' ', ".")           # spaces to dot
  $m = $m.Replace(",", ".")           # commas to dot
  $m = $m.Replace([char]10, ".")      # linefeeds to dot

  while ($m.Contains("..")) {
    $m = $m.Replace("..",".")         # multiple dots to dot
  }

  return $m
}

It works OK, but it seems like a lot of code and can be simplified. I've read that regex can work with patterns, but am not clear if that would work in this case. Any hints?

regexp-replace powershell regex
2 Answers

Use a regex character class:

Function CleanupMessage([string]$m) {
  return $m -replace '[ ,.\n]+', '.'
}

EXPLANATION

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  [ ,.\n]+                  any character of: ' ', ',', '.', '\n' (newline)
                           (1 or more times (matching the most amount
                           possible))
user_113298900

Solution for this case:

cls
$str = "qwe asd,zxc`nufc..omg"

Function CleanupMessage([String]$m)
{
    $m -replace "( |,|`n|\.\.)", '.'
}

CleanupMessage $str

# qwe.asd.zxc.ufc.omg

Universal solution. Just enum in $toReplace what do you want to replace:

cls
$str = "qwe asd,zxc`nufc..omg+kfc*fox"

Function CleanupMessage([String]$m)
{
    $toReplace = " ", ",", "`n", "..", "+", "fox"
    .{
        $d = New-Guid
        $regex = [Regex]::Escape($toReplace-join$d).replace($d,"|")
        $m -replace $regex, '.'
    }
}

CleanupMessage $str

# qwe.asd.zxc.ufc.omg.kfc*.
user_150662900
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