Question:
–deleted earlier text – I asked the wrong question!
ahem….
What I have is $var = "\\unknowntext1\alwaysSame\unknowntext2"
I need to keep only "\\unknowntext1"
Answer:
Try regular expressions:
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$foo = 'something_of_unknown' -replace 'something.*','something' |
Or if you know only partially the ‘something’, then e.g.
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'something_of_unknown' -replace '(some[^_]*).*','$1' 'some_of_unknown' -replace '(some[^_]*).*','$1' 'somewhatever_of_unknown' -replace '(some[^_]*).*','$1' |
The $1 is reference to group in parenthesis (the (some[^_]*) part).
Edit (after changed question):
If you use regex, then special characters need to be escaped:
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"\\unknowntext1\alwaysSame\unknowntext2" -replace '\\\\unknowntext1.*', '\\unknowntext1' |
or (another regex magic) use lookbehind like this:
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"\\unknowntext1\alwaysSame\unknowntext2" -replace '(?<=\\\\unknowntext1).*', '' |
(which is: take anything (.*), but there must be \\unknowntext1 before it ('(?<=\\\\unknowntext1)) and replace it with empty string.
Edit (last)
If you know that there is something known in the middle (the alwaysSame), this might help:
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"\\unknowntext1\alwaysSame\unknowntext2" -replace '(.*?)\\alwaysSame.*', '$1' |