How to add a tab to a text file

Question

I am running a for loop that would query for certain services and then output the services and their selected properties to a text file on each separate line where each property is separated by a tab, but I haven't figured out how to add a tab to a text file.

For instance, this is current set of strings in my code:

write-output $server, $servicename, $status, $startname | out-file -append output.txt

I would like to append the above string to output.txt, so it would appear like this:

server1 <tab> servername <tab> status <tab> startname
server2 <tab> servername <tab> status <tab> startname

Solution 1

"`t" will output a tab character.

Solution 2

Try something like this:

"{0}`t{1}`t{2}`t{3}" -f $server, $servicename, $status, $startname |
    Out-File "C:\path\to\output.txt" -Append

If your input data is a list of objects, you may also be able to use Export-Csv or ConvertTo-Csv:

... | ConvertTo-Csv -Delimiter "`t" -NoTypeInformation |
    Out-File "C:\path\to\output.txt" -Append