How to Copy-Item to destination with regex folder?

March 9, 2022

I want to copy a file in a folder while matching a regex pattern like *-user (example directory name: v52-user)
How can I do this with Copy-Item?

>Solution :

As commented, you can use the -Filter parameter on Get-ChildItem (no regex) like so:

# assuming the file has an extension '.txt'
(Get-ChildItem -Path 'PathWhereTheFileIs' -Filter '*-user.txt' -File) | Copy-Item -Destination 'PathToCopyTo'

If you really want to use regex, you can do:

Get-ChildItem -Path 'PathWhereTheFileIs' -File | 
Where-Object { $_.BaseName -match '-user$' } | 
Copy-Item -Destination 'PathToCopyTo'

From your comments I gather you need to find a folder that matches the *-user pattern and that you know exactly which file you need to copy once the folder is found.

For that you can do:

$fileToCopy  = 'X:\somewhere\known_filename.txt'
$destination = Get-ChildItem -Path 'PathWhereTheFolderShouldBe' -Filter '*-user' -Directory -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
if ($destination) { Copy-Item -Path $fileToCopy -Destination $destination.FullName }
else { Write-Host "Destination folder could not be found.." }

Or with regex:

$fileToCopy  = 'X:\somewhere\known_filename.txt'
$destination = Get-ChildItem -Path 'PathWhereTheFolderShouldBe' -Directory -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | 
               Where-Object { $_.Name -match '-user$' }
if ($destination) { Copy-Item -Path $fileToCopy -Destination $destination.FullName }
else { Write-Host "Destination folder could not be found.." }