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powershellreplacestring-literals

Powershell -replace when replacement string contains $+

I am doing a string replacement in PowerShell. I have no control over the strings that are being replaced, but I can reproduce the issue I'm having this way:

> 'word' -replace 'word','@#$+'
@#word

When the actual output I need is

> 'word' -replace 'word','@#$+'
@#$+

The string $+ is being expanded to the word being replaced, and there's no way that I can find to stop this from happening. I've tried escaping the $ with \ (as if it was a regex), with backtick ` (as is the normal PowerShell way). For example:

> 'word' -replace 'word',('@#$+' -replace '\$','`$')
@#`word

How can I replace with a literal $+ in PowerShell? For what it's worth I'm running PowerShell Core 6, but this is reproducible on PowerShell 5 as well.

Solution

  • Instead of using the -replace operator, you can use the .Replace() method like so:

    PS> 'word'.Replace('word','@#$+')
@#$+

    The .Replace() method comes from the .NET String class whereas the -Replace operator is implemented using System.Text.RegularExpressions.Regex.Replace().

    More info here: https://vexx32.github.io/2019/03/20/PowerShell-Replace-Operator/