specify the regex dot `.` and `..` in powershell to find files/directories?

Question

I find powershell in some ways, can do regexes to a limited extent. No doubt it can do more but I can't see why it isn't here. I'm trying to use a regex to specify files/directories.

For example, when I have a directory called 'qwe' this will show it

PS C:\Users\bob\a> Get-ChildItem C:\Users\bob\a\[qwe][qwe][qwe]

d----        24/08/2014   1:28 PM            qwe

But I can't do

PS C:\Users\bob\a> Get-ChildItem C:\Users\bob\a\q.e

(to pick up the qwe directory)

And if I do

PS C:\Users\bob\a> Get-ChildItem C:\Users\bob\a\..

Then it goes back a directory and there's no way I can find to make it match a file/dir of 2+ characters or even 2 characters, with the regex ..

However, it does support this aspect of regular expressions [abcd] (a character class to match an 'a' or 'b' or 'c' or 'd') or [a-z] though it is somewhat unregex like as [abcd] only matches where the result is one character. With a proper regex it'd normally match anything with that character including when there's more than that character there.

Answer 1

Dot has a special meaning for file names, so you have to use Where-Object (or its short form) for such type of filtering:

Get-ChildItem . | Where-Object { $_.Name -match '^q.e$' }