Powershell filter filenames with specific file extension

Question

I am working on a Powershell script that will return a list of files based on a filtered set of names and a specific extension, which in this case of the .pdf extension file type. I currently have this set up in a foreach control structure.

So far I have done this:

$MechDWGFilterList = @('*ifc*','*mech*', '*permit*', '*final*', '*CD*')
$MechDWGFile = @()

# $MechDWGFolder contains 1 or more filtered full path files
$MechDWGList = Get-ChildItem -Path $MechDWGFolder -Filter *.pdf -r | Sort-Object -Descending -Property LastWriteTime 

$count = 0
foreach ($file in $MechDWGList)
{
    # Where the file name contains one of these filters
    foreach($filter in $MechDWGFilterList)
    {
        if($file.Name -like $filter)
        {           
            $MechDWGFile += $file
            $count += 1
        }
    }
}

But I would like to condense something like below where I can avoid having to create an additional object $MechDWGFile from the above code.

$MechDWGFilterList = @('*ifc*','*mech*', '*permit*', '*final*', '*CD*')
$MechDWGFilterList2 = 'ifc|mech|permit|final|CD' #Tried this regex expression as well

$MechDWGList = Get-ChildItem -Path $MechDWGFolder -Filter ($MechDWGFilterList).pdf -r | Sort-Object -Descending -Property LastWriteTime 
Write-Output $MechDWGList

I feel like I'm close, unless this is completely not doable without an iterative control loop. Help understanding this challenge would be greatly appreciated!

Some other background refernce info: PowerShell 5.1 is being used as Administrator, Windows 10 OS

-Filter won't work with regex, you could pass the result from Get-ChildItem to a filtering cmdlet such as Where-Object — Santiago Squarzon

Santiago Squarzon Santiago Squarzon · Accepted Answer · 2022-03-18T16:21:33

-Filter only supports * and ? wildcards. In this case you could pipe the result of Get-ChildItem to Where-Object for filtering:

$MechDWGList = Get-ChildItem -Path $MechDWGFolder -Filter *.pdf -r |
    Where-Object { $_.Name -match 'ifc|mech|permit|final|CD' } |
    Sort-Object -Descending -Property LastWriteTime

This would be basically like doing this with a foreach loop and an if condition:

$MechDWGList = & {
    foreach($file in Get-ChildItem -Path $MechDWGFolder -Filter *.pdf -r) {
        if($file.Name -match 'ifc|mech|permit|final|CD') { $file }
    }
} | Sort-Object -Descending -Property LastWriteTime

Powershell filter filenames with specific file extension

1 Answers