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You want to place special characters (such as tab and newline) in a string variable.
In an expanding string, use PowerShell’s escape sequences to include special characters such as tab and newline.
PS > $myString = "Report for Today`n----------------" PS > $myString Report for Today ----------------
As discussed in Recipe 5.1, PowerShell strings come in two varieties: literal (or nonexpanding) and expanding strings. A literal string uses single quotes around its text, whereas an expanding string uses double quotes around its text.
In a literal string, all the text between the single quotes becomes part of your string. In an expanding string, PowerShell expands variable names (such as $ENV:SystemRoot) and escape sequences (such as `n) with their values (such as the SystemRoot environment variable and the newline character).
Unlike many languages that use a backslash character (\) for escape sequences, PowerShell uses a backtick (`) character. This stems from its focus on system administration, where backslashes are ubiquitous in pathnames.
For a detailed explanation of the escape sequences and replacement rules inside PowerShell strings, see “Strings”.
Recipe 5.1, “Create a String”
“Strings”