Color words in powershell script format-table output

Question

Is it possible to color only certain words (not complete lines) for a powershell output using format-table. For example, this script scans a folder recursively for a string

Answer 1

I like Rynant's approach. Here is an alternate implementation, using -split instead of IndexOf:

filter ColorWord( [string]$word, [ConsoleColor]$color ) {
    $later = $false
    $_ -split [regex]::Escape( $word ) | foreach {
      if( $later ) { Write-Host "$word" -NoNewline -ForegroundColor $color }
      else { $later = $true }
      Write-Host $_ -NoNewline
    }
    Write-Host
}

Split includes empty strings if the line starts or ends with the given word, hence the extra "if not first" logic.

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Edit: Following Rynant's comment, here's another implementation that supports both simple and regex patterns:

filter ColorPattern( [string]$Pattern, [ConsoleColor]$Color, [switch]$SimpleMatch ) {
  if( $SimpleMatch ) { $Pattern = [regex]::Escape( $Pattern ) }
  
  $split = $_ -split $Pattern
  $found = [regex]::Matches( $_, $Pattern, 'IgnoreCase' )
  for( $i = 0; $i -lt $split.Count; ++$i ) {
    Write-Host $split[$i] -NoNewline
    Write-Host $found[$i] -NoNewline -ForegroundColor $Color
  }
  
  Write-Host
}

The output from the following examples shows the difference:

PS> '\d00\d!' | ColorPattern '\d' 'Magenta' -Simple
\d00\d!

PS> '\d00\d!' | ColorPattern '\d' 'Magenta'
\d00\d!