Question

I am trying to replace a sentence in .config file using powershell.

${c:Web.config} = ${c:Web.config} -replace

‘$BASE_PATH$\Test\bin`$Test_TYPE`$\WebTest.dll’ , ‘c:\program Files\example\webtest.dll’

Everytime I try to run the above code I get

“Invalid regular expression pattern:
$BASE_PATH$\Test\bin\$Test_TYPE$\WebTest.dll”
at c:\tests\runtesting.ps1 -replace
<<<<
$BASE_PATH$\Test\bin\$Test_TYPE$\WebTest.dll

If I don’t use the backtick the dollar signs will disappear and some text.

How would I pass dollar signs in a string to -replace?

Answer 1

This is about how to escape regexes. Every special character (special with regards to regular expressions) such as $ should be escaped with \

'$A$B()[].?etc' -replace '\$|\(|\)|\[|\]|\.|\?','x'
'$BASE_PATH$\Test\bin$Test_TYPE$\WebTest.dll' -replace '\$BASE_PATH\$\\Test\\bin\$Test_TYPE\$\\WebTest.dll','something'

The backtick would be used when the regex would be like this:

'$A$B' -replace "\`$",'x'