Check if a string contains any substring in an array in PowerShell - powershell

Question

I am studying PowerShell. I want to know how to check if a string contains any substring in an array in PowerShell. I know how to do the same in Python. The code is given below:
any(substring in string for substring in substring_list)
Is there similar code available in PowerShell?
My PowerShell code is given below.
$a = #('one', 'two', 'three')
$s = "one is first"
I want to validate $s with $a. If any string in $a is present in $s then return True. Is it possible in PowerShell?

Answer 1

Using the actual variables in the question for simplicity:
$a = #('one', 'two', 'three')
$s = "one is first"
$null -ne ($a | ? { $s -match $_ }) # Returns $true
Modifying $s to not include anything in $a:
$s = "something else entirely"
$null -ne ($a | ? { $s -match $_ }) # Returns $false
(That's about 25% fewer characters than chingNotCHing's answer, using the same variable names of course :-)

Answer 2

($substring_list | %{$string.contains($_)}) -contains $true
should strictly follow your one-liner

Answer 3

For PowerShell ver. 5.0+
Instead of,
$null -ne ($a | ? { $s -match $_ })
try this simpler version:
$q = "Sun"
$p = "Sunday", "Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday", "Friday", "Saturday"
[bool]($p -match $q)
This returns $True if substring $q is in the array of string $p.
Another Example:
if ($p -match $q) {
Write-Host "Match on Sun !"
}

Answer 4

Michael Sorens' code answer works best to avoid the pitfall of partial substrings matching. It just needs a slight regex modification. If you have the string $s = "oner is first", the code would still return true since 'one' would match 'oner' (a match in PowerShell means the second string contains the first string.
$a = #('one', 'two', 'three')
$s = "oner is first"
$null -ne ($a | ? { $s -match $_ }) # Returns $true
Add some regex for word boundary '\b' and the r on 'oner' will now return false:
$null -ne ($a | ? { $s -match "\b$($_)\b" }) # Returns $false

Answer 5

(I know it's an older thread but at least I might help people looking at this in the future.)
Any response given that uses -match will produce incorrect answers.
Example: $a -match $b will produce false negatives if $b is "."
A better answer would be to use .Contains - but it's case sensitive so you'd have to set all strings to upper or lower case before comparing:
$a = #('one', 'two', 'three')
$s = "one is first"
$a | ForEach-Object {If ($s.toLower().Contains($_.toLower())) {$True}}
Returns $True
$a = #('one', 'two', 'three')
$s = "x is first"
$a | ForEach-Object {If ($s.toLower().Contains($_.toLower())) {$True}}
Returns nothing
You could tweak it to return $True or $False if you'd want, but IMO the above is easier.

Answer 6

I'm amazed that in 6 years nobody has given this more simple and readable answer
$a = #("one","two","three")
$s = "one1 is first"
($s -match ($a -join '|')) #return True
So simply implode the array into a string using vertical bar "|" , as this is the alternation (the "OR" operator) in regex.
https://www.regular-expressions.info/alternation.html
https://blog.robertelder.org/regular-expression-alternation/
Also keep in mind that the accepted answer will not search for exact match. If you want exact match you can use the \b (word boundary)
https://www.regular-expressions.info/wordboundaries.html
$a = #("one","two","three")
$s = "one1 is first"
($s -match '\b('+($a -join '|')+')\b') #return False

Answer 7

It is possible to select a subset of strings containing any of the strings like this:
$array = #("a", "b")
$source = #("aqw", "brt", "cow")
$source | where {
$found = $FALSE
foreach($arr in $array){
if($_.Contains($arr)){
$found = $TRUE
}
if($found -eq $TRUE){
break
}
}
$found
}

Answer 8

One way to do this:
$array = #("test", "one")
$str = "oneortwo"
$array|foreach {
if ($str -match $_) {
echo "$_ is a substring of $str"
}
}