Split and Join Operators

The Split and Join operators are used in PowerShell to divide and combine the substrings.

-Join Operator

The -Join operator is used in PowerShell to combine the set of strings into a single string. The strings are combined in the same order in which they appear in the command.

The following two statements are the syntax to use the Join operator:

-Join <String>
<String> -Join <Delimiter>

In the above syntax, the <String> parameter is used to specify the one or more strings to be joined. And the <Delimiter> parameter is used to specify one or more characters placed between the combined strings. The default Delimiter is " ".

Note: If we use the unary join operator (-join <String>) to combine the strings, we must enclose them in parenthesis, or store them in a variable.

Examples: The below examples describe how to use the unary and binary (With Delimiter) Join operator in different ways:

Example1:

- Join "windows","Operating","System"

The command in this example displays the following output:

Windows 
Operating 
System 

Example2:

- Join ("windows","Operating","System")

The command in this example displays the following output:

WindowsOperatingSystem

Example3:

$a = "windows","Operating","System"
- Join $a

The second command in this example displays the following output:

WindowsOperatingSystem 

Example4:

$x = "WIND", "S P", "ERSHELL"
$x -join "OW"

This example uses the multiple-character delimiter to join the three strings, which are stored in the variable $x. The second command in this example displays the following output:

WINDOWS POWERSHELL

-Split Operator

The -Split operator is used in PowerShell to divide the one or more strings into the substrings.

The following statements are the syntax to use the -split operator:

-Split <String>
-Split (<String[]>)
<String> -Split <Delimiter>[,<Max-substrings>[,"<Options>"]]
<String> -Split {<ScriptBlock>} [,<Max-substrings>]

In the above Syntax, the following parameters are used:

1. <string> : This parameter is used to specify the one or more string to be split. The same delimiter rule splits the multiple strings.
2. <delimiter> : The default delimiter is " ". When the strings are split, it is omitted from all the substrings.
3. <max-substrings> : This parameter is used to specify the maximum number of times that a string splits.
4. <ScriptBlock> : This parameter is an expression that specifies the rules for applying the delimiter. We must enclose the script block in the braces"{}".
5. <Options> : This parameter is valid only when the <max-substring> parameter is used in the statement.

Examples: The following examples describe how to use the -split operator in different ways:

Example 1:

-split "a b c d e f g h"

This command displays the following output:

a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h

Example2:

$a = "a b c d e f g h" 
-split $a

The output of this example is the same as the output of example1.

Example3:

$a = "a=b=c=d=e=f=g=h" 
$a -split "="

The output of this example is also same as the output of example1.

Example4:

$a = "a=b=c=d=e=f=g=h" 
$a -split "=",3

This example displays the following output:

a
b
c=d=e=f=g=h

Example5:

$a = "a=b=c=d=e=f=g=h" 
$a -split { $_ -eq "b" -or $_ -eq "f"}

This example displays the following output:

a=
=c=d=e=
=g=h