Have given up on figuring this out on my own.

Sample string to work the regex on:

"this","is","a","test"

The below regex works fine for double quoted (once) and not quoted text.

[`""`]?is[`""`]?

However it matches part strings like is in this, in the sample string.

Looking to do the following, to delete (for example) "is" OR is in the sample string

$String = '"this`","is","a","test'

$ConstructedRegex = "[`""`]?is[`""`]?,?"

$String.replace($ConstructedRegex,"").trimstart(",").trimend(",")

Expected outcome: $String = "this","a","test"

Have given up on figuring this out on my own.

Sample string to work the regex on:

"this","is","a","test"

The below regex works fine for double quoted (once) and not quoted text.

[`""`]?is[`""`]?

However it matches part strings like is in this, in the sample string.

Looking to do the following, to delete (for example) "is" OR is in the sample string

$String = '"this`","is","a","test'

$ConstructedRegex = "[`""`]?is[`""`]?,?"

$String.replace($ConstructedRegex,"").trimstart(",").trimend(",")

Expected outcome: $String = "this","a","test"

• regex
• powershell

• 1 Use: [`""]?\bis\b[`""]? – anubhava Commented Feb 5 at 17:53
• 1 @anubhava That did it. Thanks! Want to make it an answer so I can upvote and accept? – user66001 Commented Feb 5 at 18:00
• 1 @SantiagoSquarzon I have a solution from anubhava, but to satisfy what might be curiosity - Matching the words in between the commas, regardless of whether they are quoted or not. – user66001 Commented Feb 5 at 18:01
• 1 @SantiagoSquarzon Done – user66001 Commented Feb 5 at 18:55
• 1 @SantiagoSquarzon Sorry, updated. It is a string. – user66001 Commented Feb 5 at 19:07

1 Answer 1

First consideration is that .Replace is a string method for literal replacements, it doesn't work with regex. What you want to use is -replace, the regex operator for replacements.

As for how you could approach the problem, since is could be quoted or not and it could be anywhere, including the beginning or end of a string, probably the easiest way to approach it is by splitting on , then filtering where the token doesn't match ^"?is"?$ (-notmatch, just like the other comparison operators, can act as a filter when there is a collection on the left-hand side) and lastly joining back with ,:

'is,"this","is","a","test",is' -split ',' -notmatch '^"?is"?$' -join ','

# Outputs: "this","a","test"

If you wanted to do it via replacement, you could perhaps use this pattern however I don't see a way to do it in one go (it requires a TrimEnd):

$result = 'is,"this","is","a","test",is' -replace '(?<=(?:^|,))"?is"?(?:,|$)'
$result.TrimEnd(',')