Powershell Match a string that may contain asterix - powershell

Question

I'm running into issues with a string that gets parsed a certificate friendly name and attemps a lookup to see if it already exists. When the friendly name contains a '*' the script bombs.
I know I could escape the '*', but I don't have control of when it's parsed to the script. What is the best way of either escaping on the fly or matching strings when/if they contain metacharacters?
# this does not work
# Bad argument to operator '-match': parsing "*.test.com" - Quantifier {x,y} following nothing..
if(Get-ChildItem cert:\ -Recurse | Where-Object {$_.FriendlyName -and $_.FriendlyName -match '*.test.com'} | Select-Object -First 1) {
exit 1
} else {
exit 0
}
# this works fine
if(Get-ChildItem cert:\ -Recurse | Where-Object {$_.FriendlyName -and $_.FriendlyName -match 'string.test.com'} | Select-Object -First 1) {
exit 1
} else {
exit 0
}

Answer 1

In your specific case, I think you want to test for an exact match. In that case you should use the -eq operator instead of -match.
mjolinor's answer provides a good general explanation on whild cards.

Answer 2

'*.test.com' is a wildcard pattern. Use that with the -like operator. The -match operator uses a regular expression for matching, which has different rules and metacharacters than the wildcard match.
See:
Get-Help about_Wildcards
Get-Help about_Regular_Expressions