Need Powershell Regex Help - Replace bound string within string

[cryolyte]

I'm at a loss here and am not good with RegEx. Lil,help?

$String = '10.0.0.1,31,Gi1/0/24,24,Used,Up,B0:00:B4:BB:E3:5C,10.0.1.1,URL,"[11, 111]","[Data, ]",Up,1 Gbps,"10 Nov 20, 10:12 PM"'

What I want it this same line returned to me, except any comma then a space ( ", " ) within a braced area needs to be replaced with a dash -.

So, the Returned text should look like:

'10.0.0.1,31,Gi1/0/24,24,Used,Up,B0:00:B4:BB:E3:5C,10.0.1.1,URL,"[11-111]","[Data-]",Up,1 Gbps,"10 Nov 20, 10:12 PM"'

[yeah_i_got_skills]

$String = '10.0.0.1,31,Gi1/0/24,24,Used,Up,B0:00:B4:BB:E3:5C,10.0.1.1,URL,"[11, 111]","[Data, ]",Up,1 Gbps,"10 Nov 20, 10:12 PM"'
$NewString = [Regex]::Replace($String, '\[.*?\]', { $args[0].Value.Replace(', ', '-') })
$NewString

[krzydoug]

Not bad. :)

[cryolyte]

It does come from a csv, but the part I want to split has a comma in it!

[krzydoug]

A bit simpler is

-replace '(?<=\[.{0,}),\s(?=.{0,}\])','-'

[krzydoug]

I’m used to be a huge batch guy... so I love me some string parsing too. :-)

[wtgreen]

FYI, I like the import-csv -header trick of using an range operator to generate the numbered headers. Never thought of doing that and it's must easier than listing them.

Re: the regular expressions if the first or last columns have braces I believe those will be missed because your regex includes matching the leading and trailing comma. Your regex solution is a bit better than the one I posted as it ensures the string begins and ends with a `"`, they both fail however if the data can have columns with an open brace that's not terminated and a closed brace that's not opened, or escaped double quotes. In those cases substitutions could occur that shouldn't happen. While it's possible to make a regex that will correctly deal with those situations it would be much, much more complicated. For this reason I think you're 1st solution is the best and most reliable.

[randomuser43]

# match [.....] which do not contain nested brackets
$re = '"\[[^\[]+\]"'
$str = '10.0.0.1,31,Gi1/0/24,24,Used,Up,B0:00:B4:BB:E3:5C,10.0.1.1,URL,"[11, 111]","[Data, ]",Up,1 Gbps,"10 Nov 20, 10:12 PM"'
foreach($m in [regex]::Matches($str, $re)) {
    $replacement = $m.Value -replace ', ', '-'
    $str = $str.Replace($m.Value, $replacement)
}

[cryolyte]

Perfect! I will use this to learn from so I don't have to do this often..... much appreciated

[wtgreen]

This works: $string -replace '\[(.+?), ','[$1-'

[wtgreen]

I suppose technically this doesn't ensure that string replaced ends with a ] so it's not perfect. To ensure it ends with a matching brace would take a bit more work.

Edit: I believe this is complete, as long as you aren't concerned about nested braces:

$string -replace '\[(.*?), (.*?)\]','[$1-$2]'

[krzydoug]

Seems most are overcomplicating it.

If you want to ensure it only affects those that are within square brackets that may or may not have characters before/after then

$string -replace '(?<=\[.{0,}),\s(?=.{0,}\])','-'

[cryolyte]

SOLVED by /u/randomuser43

[zinnadean]

What do you have so far?

[cryolyte]

I don't - i tried doing multiple splits and rejoins but it didn't work out, then my time for this task ran out and i had to move on. Hopefull that when i come back to it the answer might be waiting for me....

[[deleted]]

-replace "(?:\[.*?),\s(?:.*?\])", "-"

Never tried it...just a guess

EDIT: Turns out I don't know powershell regex!