Regex multi-line working in regexr but not PowerShell

Question

I have a regex query working in regexr but it will not work for me in PowerShell. What am I doing wrong?

regex

(Host.*[\r\n]+([^\r\n]*)+[\r\n]+([^\r\n]*))

Data

HostName: ComputerName
Date: 2018-12-21
Time: 09:16:02
Step: 01
Date: 2018-12-21
Time: 09:29:18
Step: 02
Date: 2018-12-21
Time: 09:47:38
Step: 03
Date: 2018-12-21
Time: 10:08:43
Step: 04
Date: 2018-12-21
Time: 10:27:00
Step: 05
Date: 2018-12-21
Time: 10:45:14
Step: 06
Date: 2018-12-26
Time: 10:02:39

On match it captures the rest of the line and the next two lines. Since everything is in groups of 3 per entry in the log.

I pasted the working code in powershell and attempted the three ways.

$data | select-string -match "(Host.*[\r\n]+([^\r\n]*)+[\r\n]+([^\r\n]*))"

$data -matches "(Host.*[\r\n]+([^\r\n]*)+[\r\n]+([^\r\n]*))"

I've done research and the closest thing I can get is that windows doesn't play nice with \r\n.

I haven't found a solution yet.

What am I doing wrong or what do I need to replace \r\n with?

Keep in mind that if you use Get-Content without the -Raw switch you'll end up with an array of strings instead of a single string (with linebreaks) — bluuf
– bluuf, Commented Jan 8, 2019 at 15:49
do you just want the 1st 3 lines? that is all that regexr shows being captured. if so, there are simpler ways to grab lines 0-2 ... — Lee_Dailey
– Lee_Dailey, Commented Jan 8, 2019 at 15:51

Ansgar Wiechers · Accepted Answer · 2019-01-08 15:57:00Z

1

Your data isn't what you expect. Get-Content reads files into an array of lines and removes the line breaks from the end of each line. Both Select-String and -match check each line separately against the regular expression, but can't find a match, because each line contains only a fraction of what you want matched.

To fix the issue you need the entire content of the file as a single string.

$data = Get-Content 'C:\path\to\input.txt' | Out-String

On PowerShell v3 or newer you could also use

$data = Get-Content 'C:\path\to\input.txt' -Raw

answered Jan 8, 2019 at 15:57

Ansgar Wiechers

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