Using with a RegEx in PowerShell to replace everything from the beginning of the string up to the first comma only with whatever I want

Question

I have this string:

CN=Salaried_Emplyees,OU=Migration,OU=Groups

and need a regex to replace everything from the beginning of the string up to the first comma only with whatever I want, ie change to:

CN=Anything,OU=Migration,OU=Groups

However every regex I try ends up matching to the last comma rather than stopping after the first one.

An example of what I've tried:

"CN=Salaried_Emplyees,OU=Migration,OU=Groups" -replace "^CN=.*,", "Anything"

ends up as

AnythingOU=Groups

EDIT:

I'd like to modify this further now by not matching the CN= part so it will only match:

Salaried_Emplyees,

not

CN=Salaried_Emplyees,

4c74356b41 · Accepted Answer · 2017-03-02 00:02:05Z

2

"CN=Anything,OU=Migration,OU=Groups" -replace '^(.*?),','YOURTEXT'

replace everything up to first comma (including it), basically you need to use *? for regex to be lazy and not greedy

"CN=Anything,OU=Migration,OU=Groups" -replace '(CN=)(.*?),','$1YOURTEXT,'

answered Mar 1, 2017 at 22:29

4c74356b41

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2 Comments

fantastic! it worked. Can you explain how please? as I tried lots of different ways. I think it's he brackets that made the difference

but generally speaking that's not very nice of you to do that @Mucker

user6811411 · Accepted Answer · 2017-03-01 22:41:32Z

0

Just to show a different way,

$string = "CN=Salaried_Emplyees,OU=Migration,OU=Groups"
$string
$Newstring = $string -replace "^[^,]+", "CN=Anything"
$Newstring

Sample output

> Q:\Test\2017-03\SO_42543257.ps1
CN=Salaried_Emplyees,OU=Migration,OU=Groups
CN=Anything,OU=Migration,OU=Groups

answered Mar 1, 2017 at 22:41

user6811411