Let’s assume you need to split a text using a fixed width. For example, if you needed the first 5 character of a text, plus the remainder, how would you do this?
Most PowerShell users would probably use string methods like these:
$text = 'ID12:Here is the text' $prefix = $text.Substring(0,5) $suffix = $text.Substring(5) $prefix $suffix
Of course, if you had a split character such as “:”, you could also go with this:
$prefix, $suffix = 'ID12:Here is the text' -split ':' $prefix $suffix
However, this would consume the split character plus it can produce more than two parts. And it is not what the job was: to split a text using a fixed WIDTH. Yet you still can use the -split operator:
$prefix, $suffix = 'ID12:Here is the text' -split '(?<=^.{5})' $prefix $suffix
The regex construct “(?<=XXX)” is a so-called “look behind” and not consumed. “^” represents the text start, and “.” represents any character. As you may have guessed, “{5}” qualifies how often the placeholder must occur, so essentially this regex splits the first 5 characters from the rest of the text and always returns two chunks (provided the text is at least 6 characters long).
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