Change specific part of a string - powershell

Question

I've got a .txt-File with some text in it:
Property;Value
PKG_GUID;"939de9ec-c9ac-4e03-8bef-7b7ab99bff74"
PKG_NAME;"WinBasics"
PKG_RELATED_TICKET;""
PKG_CUSTOMER_DNS_SERVERS;"12314.1231
PKG_CUSTOMER_SEARCH_DOMAINS;"ms.com"
PKG_JOIN_EXISTING_DOMAIN;"True"
PKG_DOMAINJOIN_DOMAIN;"ms.com"
PKG_DOMAINJOIN_USER;"mdoe"
PKG_DOMAINJOIN_PASSWD;"*******"
So now, is there a way to replace those *'s with e.g. numbers or sth. ?
If so, may you tell me how to do it?

Answer 1

Much like Rahul I would use RegEx as well. Considering the application I'd run Get-Content through a ForEach loop, and replace text as needed on a line-by-line basis.
Get-Content C:\Path\To\File.txt | ForEach{$_ -replace "(PKG_DOMAINJOIN_PASSWD;`")([^`"]+?)(`")", "`${1}12345678`$3"}
That would output:
Property;Value
PKG_GUID;"939de9ec-c9ac-4e03-8bef-7b7ab99bff74"
PKG_NAME;"WinBasics"
PKG_RELATED_TICKET;""
PKG_CUSTOMER_DNS_SERVERS;"12314.1231
PKG_CUSTOMER_SEARCH_DOMAINS;"ms.com"
PKG_JOIN_EXISTING_DOMAIN;"True"
PKG_DOMAINJOIN_DOMAIN;"ms.com"
PKG_DOMAINJOIN_USER;"mdoe"
PKG_DOMAINJOIN_PASSWD;"12345678"
On second thought, I don't know if I'd do that. I might import it as a CSV, update the property, and export the CSV again.
Import-CSV C:\Path\To\File.txt -Delimiter ";" |%{if($_.Property -eq "PKG_DOMAINJOIN_PASSWD"){$_.value = "12345678";$_}else{$_}|export-csv c:\path\to\newfile.txt -delimiter ";" -notype

Answer 2

If You are using Powershell V2.0 (Hopefully) you can try something like below. gc is short hand for get-content commandlet.
(gc D:\SO_Test\test.txt) -replace '\*+','12345678'
With this the resultant data would be as below (notice the last line)
Property;Value
PKG_GUID;"939de9ec-c9ac-4e03-8bef-7b7ab99bff74"
<Rest of the lines here>
PKG_DOMAINJOIN_USER;"mdoe"
PKG_DOMAINJOIN_PASSWD;"12345678" <-- Notice here; *'s changed to numbers

Answer 3

Rahul's answer was good, I just wanted to mention that *+ will replace all instances of a single * character or more, so it would match any other place there is at least one star. If what you posted is all you would ever expect for you sample data though this would be fine.
You could alter the regex match to make it more specific if it was needed by changing it to something like
\*{3,0}
which would match 3 or more stars, or very specific would be
(?<=")\*{3,}(?=")
which would replace 3 or more stars which are surrounded by double quotes.

Answer 4

Here's a function that uses regex lookahead and lookbehind zero-length assertions to replace named parameters in a string similar to your example:
function replace-x( $string, $name, $value ) {
$regex = "(?<=$([regex]::Escape($name));`").*(?=`")"
$string -replace $regex, $value
}
Its reusable for different settings in your file, e.g:
$settings = get-content $filename
$settings = replace-x $settings PKG_DOMAINJOIN_USER foo
$settings = replace-x $settings PKG_DOMAINJOIN_PASSWD bar