powershell replace with regex any char except '.'

Question

I try to replace "..\..\..\..\[AnyCharacters]"

to

"..\..\..\..\.."

with regex in powershell.

I tried many patterns, but problem is the same, that it always starts from the begining of string and it changes all instead of last [AnyCharacters]. There could be more backslashes with dots. I do not know how many exactly.

There is no reason to replace fixed strings with regex. The .NET string replace "..\..\bla".Replace("..\", "") will do just fine. — Tomalak
– Tomalak, Commented Oct 30, 2019 at 18:22
@Tomalak Except if you get a string c:\something\..\autoexec.bat of course. But the meaning is changed for the original path in the question as well. With that in mind, just asking the FS API for an absolute path might be a better idea. — Maarten Bodewes
– Maarten Bodewes, Commented Oct 30, 2019 at 18:24
@Maarten The OP has not clarified what they actually are after, so all I"m going on is "how to remove dot-dot-backslash from a string". — Tomalak
– Tomalak, Commented Oct 30, 2019 at 18:40

Lee_Dailey · Accepted Answer · 2019-10-30 22:10:07Z

2

i suspect that i have misunderstood your intent. however, if you really want to simply replace the final text with two dots, then this will work. it uses the builtin path handling cmdlets to do the work ... [grin]

$PathString = '..\..\..\..\AnyThingHere.txt'
$DotDot = '..'

Join-Path -Path (Split-Path -Path $PathString -Parent) -ChildPath $DotDot

output = ..\..\..\..\..

answered Oct 30, 2019 at 22:10

Lee_Dailey

7,5292 gold badges25 silver badges27 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

powershell replace with regex any char except '.'

1 Answer 1

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related