about_wildcards - PowerShell command help and examples

Describes how to use wildcard characters in Windows PowerShell. (about_wildcards)

 TOPIC
 
    about_Wildcards 

 SHORT DESCRIPTION
 
    Describes how to use wildcard characters in Windows PowerShell. 

 LONG DESCRIPTION
 
    In many cases, you will want to run a cmdlet against a group of 
    items rather than an individual item. For example, you might 
    want to locate all the files in the C:\Techdocs directory that have a 
    .ppt file name extension. If you were to run the following command, it 
    would return all the items in the directory: 

        Get-ChildItem c:\techdocs 

    The problem with this command is that you would have to visually 
    inspect all the documents listed in the directory to determine which 
    files use the .ppt file name extension. However, you can limit the items 
    that are returned by using wildcard characters in a cmdlet's parameters. 
    A wildcard character is a type of placeholder that allows you to search 
    unknown values in order to return specific results. The process of using 
    wildcard characters is sometimes referred to as "globbing". For example, 
    you can recast the previous example so that only .ppt files are 
    returned: 

        Get-ChildItem c:\techdocs\*.ppt 

    In this case, the asterisk (*) is used as a wildcard character to specify 
    that any characters can exist before the .ppt file name extension. Because 
    the file name extension is included, all files returned by the command must 
    have that file name extension, but the files can have any name. As a 
    result, only the files that you are looking for are returned. 

    Windows PowerShell supports several wildcard characters in addition to the 
    asterisk wildcard character. 

        Wildcard Description        Example  Match             No match 
        -------- ------------------ -------- ----------------- -------- 
        *        Matches zero or    a*       A, ag, Apple      banana 
                 more characters 

        ?        Matches exactly    ?n       an, in, on        ran 
                 one character in 
                 the specified 
                 position 

        [ ]      Matches a range    [a-l]ook book, cook, look  took 
                 of characters 

        [ ]      Matches specified  [bc]ook  book, cook        hook 
                 characters 

    Most cmdlets accept wildcard characters in some of their parameters. The 
    Help topic for each cmdlet describes which parameters, if any, permit 
    wildcard characters. For parameters in which wildcard characters are 
    accepted, their use is case insensitive. For example, ?n will return An, 
    an, In, in, On, and on. 

    You can also mix wildcard characters within a single parameter. For 
    example, suppose that you want to display all the .txt files in the 
    C:\Techdocs directory that begin with the letters a through l. You can use 
    the following command: 

        Get-ChildItem c:\techdocs\[a-l]*.txt 

    The command uses a range wildcard ([a-l]) to specify that the file name 
    should begin with the letters a through l. The command then uses the 
    asterisk wildcard character to provide a placeholder for any characters 
    between the first letter and the file name extension. 

SEE ALSO 
    about_Language_Keywords 

C:\Windows>powershell get-help about_Windows_PowerShell_2.0 -full 

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