Regex captures with explicit success checks

The idea

For a scalar string, -match returns a Boolean and a successful match populates the automatic Matches hashtable. Named groups make the meaning of captured text clear. Read captures inside the successful branch and validate conversion to the intended type. A regex describes an input shape; it does not automatically establish every business rule, numeric range, or encoding assumption your program needs.

Matches is stateful. A later failed match does not clear an earlier successful capture, so reading it unconditionally can accidentally reuse old data. With a collection on the left, -match filters matching elements and does not populate Matches in the same way as a scalar match. Keep each parsing operation narrow, give errors a deliberate path, and choose case-sensitive variants when the input contract requires them.

if ('id:12' -match '^id:(?<Number>[0-9]+)$') {
    [int]$Matches.Number + 1
} else {
    'Invalid identifier'
}

13

A successful anchored match captures 12. The branch converts that captured text before adding one.