PowerShell regex grouping
Will this work for you:
Get-ChildItem | Foreach-Object { if ($_.BaseName -match "(\d{4} - [^-]*)") { echo $matches[0].TrimEnd() }}Note the TrimEnd - this is to trim the trailing space before the second dash.
As for why your examples do not work: \w+ matches any word character so it will not match the space inside "something interesting". * means zero or more. So -* matches zero or more dashes, in your case - zero.
Another way to write an expression that might work for you is:
Get-ChildItem | Foreach-Object { if ($_.BaseName -match "(\d{4} - .+(?= -))") { echo $matches[0] }}where the (?= -) construct is positive lookahead assertionIn this case you do not need to trim the extra space at the end as it is accounted for in the regular expression itself.
Update 1
Modified to do the transformation:
gci | %{ $_.BaseName -replace "(\d{4}) - (.+)(?= -).*" ,'$2 ($1)' }
Try this:
Get-ChildItem | Select-String -Pattern '(\d{4})\s+-\s+(\w+(\s+\w+)*)\s+-.*' | Foreach-Object { "$($_.Matches.Groups[2].Value) ($($_.Matches.Groups[1].Value))" }