Powershell Array values contain no values from wildcard array

January 11, 2024

I have the following code

@Wildcard_Array = @ ( '"' , '[' , ']' , '*' )
$SAMAccounts = Import-Excel -Path $PSScriptRoot\PulledData.xlsx | Where-Object -Property SAM_ACCOUNT_NAME -notcontains @Wildcard_Array

What I’m trying to accomplish is that no values are returned that contain wildcard values.

If I use this I can filter dates which I want to I just don’t know how to filter out and values with wildcards/invalid options.

$SAMAccounts = Import-Excel -Path $PSScriptRoot\PulledData.xlsx | Where-Object -Property DT -eq (Get-Date -Hour 0 -Minute 0 -Second 0 -Format G | Select-Object -ExpandProperty SAM_ACCOUNT_NAME

Example:

SAM_ACCOUNT_NAME     DT
!@$#*                1/11/2024
User1                1/11/2024

I’ve tried contains, notcontains, cnotconains, notlike, and inotlike but honestly I’m not sure what i’m doing wrong. Thank you so much for your time.

>Solution :

You could use .IndexOfAny in this case:

$Wildcard_Array = [char[]] ('"', '[', ']' , '*')

@'
SAM_ACCOUNT_NAME,DT
!@$#*,1/11/2024
User1,1/11/2024
'@ | ConvertFrom-Csv |
    Where-Object { $_.SAM_ACCOUNT_NAME.IndexOfAny($Wildcard_Array) -eq -1 }

Another option could be to convert your array into a regex pattern and use -notmatch:

$Wildcard_Array = '"', '[', ']' , '*' | ForEach-Object { [regex]::Escape($_) }
$filter = '(?:{0})' -f ($Wildcard_Array -join '|')

@'
SAM_ACCOUNT_NAME,DT
!@$#*,1/11/2024
User1,1/11/2024
'@ | ConvertFrom-Csv |
    Where-Object SAM_ACCOUNT_NAME -NotMatch $filter

-contains looks for an exact match in a collection, so it isn’t an option:

'foo', 'bar' -contains 'bar' # True
'foo', 'bar' -contains 'b'   # False

And -like would require to first escape the wildcard characters (can use [WildcardPattern]::Escape similar to [regex]::Escape) and then use additional wildcards. I wouldn’t recommend this method in this case.