powershell contains not working

Question

I am trying filter by the name of each share using $Share.Name. However, when I try to use -contains in the if statement below, I get no results.

The result I want should be ADMIN$ - C:\ADMIN$

I am working my way to being able to have a variable like: $ExcludeShares = "ADMIN$" and filtering based on if the $String.Name is in $ExcludeShares

I am open to ideas on other ways to filter this.

Thanks in advance!

function GetAllUsedShares{
    [psobject]$Shares = Get-WmiObject -Class win32_share
    Foreach($Share in $Shares){
        $name = [string]$Share.Name
        if ($name -contains 'admin'){
            Write-Host $Share.Name - $Share.Path
        }

    }   
}

Answer 1

If you are testing $name for exactly 'admin' you can use the -eq comparator. This checks if the contents of $name equal the contents of your specified string 'admin'

Answer 2

You can do this in one line:

Get-WmiObject -Class win32_share | where -Property Name -like "*admin*" | % { "$($_.Name) - $($_.Path)" }

Don't forget the asterisks in the where statement. It looks for exact values in that case.

If you want to write it out, this does the same thing:

$shares = Get-WmiObject -Class win32_share

# I pipe the $shares collection into the where-object command to filter on "admin"
$adminshares = $shares | where -property Name -like "*admin*"

# now we can loop with a foreach, which has the "%" operator as it's shorthand in the oneliner
foreach ($share in $adminshares) 
{
    # variables in strings are a bit weird in powershell, but you have to wrap them like this
    write-host "$($share.Name) - $($share.Path)"
}

Answer 3

Contains is meant to work against arrays. Consider the following examples

PS C:\Users\Cameron> 1,2,3 -contains 1
True

PS C:\Users\Cameron> "123" -contains 1
False

PS C:\Users\Cameron> "123" -contains 123
True

If you are looking to see if a string contains a text pattern then you have a few options. The first 2 would be -match operator or the .Contains() string method

1. -match would be one of the simpler examples to use in and If statement. Note: -Match supports .Net regular expressions so be sure you don't put in any special characters as you might not get the results you expect.

   PS C:\Users\Cameron> "Matt" -match "m"
   True
   
   PS C:\Users\Cameron> "Matt" -match "."
   True
   

   -match is not case sensitive by default so the first example above returns True. The second example is looking to match any character which is what . represents in regex which is why it returns True as well.

2. .Contains(): -match is great but for simple strings you can ....

   "123".Contains("2")
   True
   
   "123".Contains(".")
   False
   

   Note that .Contains() is case sensitive

   "asdf".Contains('F')
   False
   
   "asdf".Contains('f')
   True