If you’d like to know whether an array contains a given element, PowerShell provides the –contains operator. This operator does not support wildcards, though, so you only can check for exact matches.
Here is a workaround that helps you filter array elements with wildcards:
$a = 'Hanover', 'Hamburg', 'Vienna', 'Zurich' # is the exact phrase present in array? $a -contains 'Hannover' # is ANY phrase present in array that matches the wildcard expression? (@($a) -like 'Ha*').Count -gt 0 # list all phrases from array that match the wildcard expressions @($a) -like 'Ha*'
