Select-String for searching in PowerShell - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Select-String for searching

📖 Scenario: You have a text file with several lines of text. You want to find all lines that contain a specific word.

🎯 Goal: Build a PowerShell script that uses Select-String to search for a word in a text file and display the matching lines.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a text file variable with exact content

Create a search word variable

Use Select-String to find lines containing the search word

Display the matching lines

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Searching text files for specific words or patterns is common in system administration and automation tasks.

💼 Career

Knowing how to use Select-String helps you quickly find important information in logs or configuration files.

1

Create a text file with content

Create a variable called filePath and set it to the string "sample.txt". Then create a text file named sample.txt with these exact lines:
PowerShell is great
I love scripting
Searching text is easy
Automation saves time

PowerShell

# Create the variable filePath and the text file sample.txt with the given lines
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use Out-File to create the text file with the lines.

2

Set the search word

Create a variable called searchWord and set it to the string "scripting".

PowerShell

$filePath = "sample.txt"
@"
PowerShell is great
I love scripting
Searching text is easy
Automation saves time
"@ | Out-File -FilePath $filePath -Encoding utf8

# Create the variable searchWord and set it to "scripting"
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Just assign the string "scripting" to the variable searchWord.

3

Use Select-String to find matching lines

Use Select-String with the variables filePath and searchWord to find all lines in the file that contain the search word. Store the result in a variable called matches.

PowerShell

$filePath = "sample.txt"
@"
PowerShell is great
I love scripting
Searching text is easy
Automation saves time
"@ | Out-File -FilePath $filePath -Encoding utf8

$searchWord = "scripting"

# Use Select-String to find lines containing searchWord in filePath and save to matches
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use Select-String -Path $filePath -Pattern $searchWord and assign it to matches.

4

Display the matching lines

Print only the matching lines from the matches variable using Write-Output.

PowerShell

$filePath = "sample.txt"
@"
PowerShell is great
I love scripting
Searching text is easy
Automation saves time
"@ | Out-File -FilePath $filePath -Encoding utf8

$searchWord = "scripting"

$matches = Select-String -Path $filePath -Pattern $searchWord

# Print the matching lines only
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a foreach loop to go through $matches and print $match.Line.