How to split string by string in Powershell

Question

I'm trying to spit the string with a delimiter, which is a string:

$string = "5637144576, messag<>est<<>>5637145326, 1<<>>5637145328, 0"
$separator = "<<>>"
$string.Split($separator)

As the result of splitting I get:

5637144576, messag
est
5637145326, 1
5637145328, 0

Instead of

5637144576, messag<>est
5637145326, 1
5637145328, 0

When I try to use overloaded split which accepts string[]:

$string = "5637144576, messag<>est<<>>5637145326, 1<<>>5637145328, 0"
$separator = @("<<>>")
$string.Split($separator)

But I get next error:

Cannot convert argument "0", with value: "System.Object[]", for "Split" to type "System.Char[]": "Cannot convert value "<<>>" to type "System.Char". Error: "String must be exactly one character long.""

Does someone knows how to split string by string?

• John Dvorak: Why should the separator <<>> split along <>?
• user2060111: Why should the separator <<>> split along <>? - this is a problem which I faced and trying to solve
• John Dvorak: is it that you want to split along any character of <<>>?

Answer 1

The -split operator uses the string to split, instead of a chararray like Split():

$string = "5637144576, messag<>est<<>>5637145326, 1<<>>5637145328, 0"
$separator = "<<>>"
$string -split $separator
5637144576, messag<>est
5637145326, 1
5637145328, 0

If you want to use the Split() method with a string, you need the $seperator to be a stringarray with one element, and also specify a stringsplitoptions value. You can see this by checking its definition:

$string.Split
OverloadDefinitions 
------------------- 
string[] Split(Params char[] separator) 
string[] Split(char[] separator, int count) 
string[] Split(char[] separator, System.StringSplitOptions options) 
string[] Split(char[] separator, int count, System.StringSplitOptions options) 
#This one
string[] Split(string[] separator, System.StringSplitOptions options) 
string[] Split(string[] separator, int count, System.StringSplitOptions options)
$string = "5637144576, messag<>est<<>>5637145326, 1<<>>5637145328, 0"
$separator = [string[]]@("<<>>")
$string.Split($separator, [System.StringSplitOptions]::RemoveEmptyEntries)
5637144576, messag<>est
5637145326, 1
5637145328, 0

EDIT: As @RomanKuzmin pointed out, -split splits using regex-patterns by default. So be aware to escape special characters (ex. . which in regex is "any character"). You could also force simplematch to disable regex-matching like:

$separator = "<<>>"
$string -split $separator, 0, "simplematch"

Read more about -split here.

• John Dvorak: est should be preserved. He seems to want to split by any character of <<>> (that is, along < and >)
• Frode F.: sry, didn't see est in the sample of the output you wanted ^^ see updated answer
• user2060111: do you know, is possible to return only not empty string?
• Frode F.: see last update. it explains the Split() methods behaviour too
• Roman Kuzmin: "the -split operator uses the literal string to split" -- The -split operator uses a regular expression by default (without the SimpleMatch option). In this example it does not matter but generally speaking it does.

Answer 2

Instaed of using Split method, you can use split operator. So your code will be like this:

$string -split '<<>>'

Answer 3

Sometimes PowerShell looks exactly like C# and at others, well you know...

It could also be used thus:

# A dummy text file
$text = @'
abc=3135066977,8701416400
def=8763026853,6433607660
xyz=3135066977,9878763344
'@ -split [Environment]::NewLine,[StringSplitOptions]"RemoveEmptyEntries"
"`nBefore `n------`n"
$text
"`nAfter `n-----`n"
# Do whatever with this
foreach ($line in $text)
{
 $line.Replace("3135066977","6660985845")
}

Answer 4

EDIT 2020年05月23日: I've moved my code to GitHub, here, where I've made updates to cover a few edge cases: https://github.com/franklesniak/PowerShell_Resources/blob/master/Split-StringOnLiteralString.ps1

---

You can use the -split operator, but it expects RegEx. Furthermore, the -split operator is only available on Windows PowerShell v3+, so we need a different method if you want something that is universally compatible with all versions of PowerShell.

A [regex] object has a Split() method that can handle this as well, but again, it expects RegEx as the "splitter". To get around this, we can use a second [regex] object and call the Escape() method to convert our literal string "splitter" into escaped RegEx.

Wrapping all this up into an easy to use function that works back to PowerShell v1 and also works on PowerShell Core 6.x.

function Split-StringOnLiteralString
{
 trap
 {
 Write-Error "An error occurred using the Split-StringOnLiteralString function. This was most likely caused by the arguments supplied not being strings"
 }
 if ($args.Length -ne 2) `
 {
 Write-Error "Split-StringOnLiteralString was called without supplying two arguments. The first argument should be the string to be split, and the second should be the string or character on which to split the string."
 } `
 else `
 {
 if (($args[0]).GetType().Name -ne "String") `
 {
 Write-Warning "The first argument supplied to Split-StringOnLiteralString was not a string. It will be attempted to be converted to a string. To avoid this warning, cast arguments to a string before calling Split-StringOnLiteralString."
 $strToSplit = [string]$args[0]
 } `
 else `
 {
 $strToSplit = $args[0]
 }
 if ((($args[1]).GetType().Name -ne "String") -and (($args[1]).GetType().Name -ne "Char")) `
 {
 Write-Warning "The second argument supplied to Split-StringOnLiteralString was not a string. It will be attempted to be converted to a string. To avoid this warning, cast arguments to a string before calling Split-StringOnLiteralString."
 $strSplitter = [string]$args[1]
 } `
 elseif (($args[1]).GetType().Name -eq "Char") `
 {
 $strSplitter = [string]$args[1]
 } `
 else `
 {
 $strSplitter = $args[1]
 }
 $strSplitterInRegEx = [regex]::Escape($strSplitter)
 [regex]::Split($strToSplit, $strSplitterInRegEx)
 }
}

Now, using the earlier example:

PS C:\Users\username> Split-StringOnLiteralString "5637144576, messag<>est<<>>5637145326, 1<<>>5637145328, 0" "<<>>"
5637144576, messag<>est
5637145326, 1
5637145328, 0

Volla!

Answer 5

This actually works in powershell 7.

$string = "5637144576, messag<>est<<>>5637145326, 1<<>>5637145328, 0"
$separator = "<<>>"
$string.Split($separator)
5637144576, messag<>est
5637145326, 1
5637145328, 0

Powershell 7 actually has a new .split() overload that more closely matches a string as a first argument. Surprisingly, the options 2nd argument can be left off, with a default 'None' value.

public string[] Split (string separator, 
 StringSplitOptions options = System.StringSplitOptions.None);

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.string.split?view=net-7.0#system-string-split(system-string-system-stringsplitoptions)

Answer 6

The following should be what you need:

 $string -Split $separator

This produces:

5637144576, messag<>est
5637145326, 1
5637145328, 0

Answer 7

This work well, when I declare a string. While getting content from a file it does not work as expected. You can try this out with the same content within a file.

• Er. Amit Joshi: Please add more result set or sample data with your response. it will be make your answer more explanatory for others.
• Ravindu: This does not really answer the question. If you have a different question, you can ask it by clicking Ask Question. To get notified when this question gets new answers, you can follow this question. Once you have enough reputation, you can also add a bounty to draw more attention to this question. - From Review