Is it possible to write a newline to the console in PowerShell?
I tried echo "\n", but it is not translated to a new line. It just outputs \n.
4 Answers
echo is used in PowerShell all the time. It is an alias for Write-Output.
The issue here is that you need to be using the PowerShell escape character which is a backtick. You can read more about this on TechNet on about_escape_characters.
The following special characters are recognized by Windows PowerShell:
`0 Null `a Alert `b Backspace `f Form feed `n New line `r Carriage return `t Horizontal tab `v Vertical tab
So, if you are just trying to break up the output, you can simply use:
echo "`n" That will actually output two new lines as all strings sent to Write-Output (see Get-Alias echo) will be terminated with a new line regardless. Since strings are evaluated as expressions in PowerShell "" would also work but it would only output the one line.
Also, since this data is being sent to the standard output stream, it will be captured by variables and pipelines. Write-Host might be a better option if that is something you want to mitigate.
2 Comments
Timo
So it needs " double quotes and not single quotes.
Matt
Double quotes permit expansion where as single quoted strings are interpreted verbatim . You can see more in Quoting Rules
Just do "". It will print a blank line.
You should use it like this:
PS D:\> "This is an `n example!" This is an example! 
Comments
echo "Test `nNewLine" or
echo "Test " "NewLine" 
echo "\n";is the way to do it.