Switch with wildcard and regex in PowerShell - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Switch with wildcard and regex

📖 Scenario: You are creating a simple script to categorize file names based on their patterns. This helps you quickly identify file types and special cases.

🎯 Goal: Build a PowerShell script that uses a switch statement with wildcard and regex patterns to classify file names into categories.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a list of file names in a variable called files with exact values.

Create a variable called specialPattern to hold a regex pattern.

Use a switch statement with wildcard and regex matching to categorize each file name.

Print the file name and its category.

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Automating file management tasks by categorizing files based on their names helps organize data and trigger specific actions.

💼 Career

Knowing how to use switch with wildcard and regex in PowerShell is useful for system administrators and automation engineers managing files and logs.

1

Create the list of file names

Create a variable called files and assign it an array with these exact file names: report1.txt, data_backup.zip, image01.png, notes.docx, temp123.tmp.

PowerShell

# Create the variable files with the exact file names
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use @( ... ) to create an array in PowerShell.

2

Create the regex pattern variable

Create a variable called specialPattern and assign it the regex pattern string ^temp\d+\.tmp$ to match file names starting with 'temp' followed by digits and ending with '.tmp'.

PowerShell

$files = @('report1.txt', 'data_backup.zip', 'image01.png', 'notes.docx', 'temp123.tmp')
# Create the variable specialPattern with the regex string
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Remember to escape backslashes in the regex string.

3

Use switch with wildcard and regex

Use a switch statement with -Wildcard and -Regex parameters to check each file in $files. Use these cases:
- Wildcard *.txt prints ' is a text file'.
- Wildcard *.zip prints ' is a zip archive'.
- Regex matching $specialPattern prints ' is a special temp file'.
- Default case prints ' is an unknown file type'.
Use foreach to loop over $files and apply the switch inside the loop.

PowerShell

$files = @('report1.txt', 'data_backup.zip', 'image01.png', 'notes.docx', 'temp123.tmp')
$specialPattern = '^temp\d+\.tmp$'
# Loop over files and use switch with -Wildcard and -Regex
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use nested switch statements to handle wildcard and regex separately.

4

Print the categorized file types

Run the script to print the category of each file as per the switch logic. The output should show each file name followed by its category message.

PowerShell

$files = @('report1.txt', 'data_backup.zip', 'image01.png', 'notes.docx', 'temp123.tmp')
$specialPattern = '^temp\d+\.tmp$'
foreach ($file in $files) {
    switch -Wildcard ($file) {
        '*.txt' { Write-Output "$file is a text file"; break }
        '*.zip' { Write-Output "$file is a zip archive"; break }
        default {
            switch -Regex ($file) {
                $specialPattern { Write-Output "$file is a special temp file"; break }
                default { Write-Output "$file is an unknown file type" }
            }
        }
    }
}
# Run the script to see output

Need a hint?

Run the script and check the console output matches the expected categories.