PowerShell - Get everything after the first "-"-CodePudding

I have the following code:

$TodayDate = Get-Date -Format "dd-MM-yyyy"
$Student = Student01 - Project 01-02 - $TodayDate

Write-Host -NoNewline -ForegroundColor White "$Student"; Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green " - was delivered!"

This script returns in the console:

Student01 - Project 01-02 - dd-MM-yyyy - was delivered

How is it possible to return only everything after the first "-"?, that is Project 01-02 - dd-MM-yyyy - was delivered?

I thought about using .split, but I couldn't make it work so that it returns everything after the first "-".

CodePudding user response：

Your problem boils down to wanting to remove a prefix from a string.

Given that the prefix to remove cannot be defined as a static, literal string, but is defined by the (included) first occurrence of a separator, you have two PowerShell-idiomatic options:

Use the -split operator, which allows you to limit the number of resulting tokens; if you limit them to 2, everything after the first separator is returned as-is; thus, the 2nd (and last) token (accessible by index [-1]) then contains the suffix of interest:
```
$str = 'Student01 - Project 01-02 - dd-MM-yyyy - was delivered'

# Split by ' - ', and return at most 2 tokens, then extract the 2nd (last) token.
# -> 'Project 01-02 - dd-MM-yyyy - was delivered'
($str -split ' - ', 2)[-1]
```

Use the -replace operator, which (like -split by default) is regex-based, and allows you to formulate a pattern that matches any prefix up to and including the first separator, which can then be removed:

$str = 'Student01 - Project 01-02 - dd-MM-yyyy - was delivered'

# Match everything up to the *first* ' - ', and remove it.
# Note that not specifying a *replacement string* (second RHS operator)
# implicitly uses '' and therefore *removes* what was matched.
# -> 'Project 01-02 - dd-MM-yyyy - was delivered'
$str -replace '^. ? - '

For an explanation of the regex (^. ? - ) and the ability to experiment with it, see this regex101.com page.