How do I type a TAB character in PowerShell

Question

Task  By default  pressing the TAB key while in Windows Command Prompt will output file names  while it does nothing in PowerShell  I want to be able to type the TAB character in interactive mode  not via scripts   Research  I found similar questions on this site and via Google search  Solutions found were addressing bash  Mac  or iterm  Linux   or suggested changing to another program such as TweakUI  My question is specific to Windows PowerShell or Command Prompt   Clarification  A simple test for whether your answer works for my question is to type echo  1 TAB-method 2  into PS CP  where TAB-method is your suggestion on how to insert a TAB character  If the echo gives 1    2  i e  1 followed by a TAB space followed by 2   that s what I m looking for  Hope that helps  and thanks everyone for taking the time to look at the question

User · Answer

TAB has a specific meaning in PowerShell. It's for command completion. So if you enter "getch" and then type a TAB. It changes what you typed into "GetChildItem" (it corrects the case, even though that's unnecessary).

From your question, it looks like TAB completion and command completion would overload the TAB key. I'm pretty sure the PowerShell designers didn't want that.

User · Answer

In the Windows command prompt you can disable tab completion  by launching it thusly   cmd exe  f off   Then the tab character will be echoed to the screen and work as you expect  Or you can disable the tab completion character  or modify what character is used for tab completion by modifying the registry   The cmd exe help page explains it      You can enable or disable file name completion for a particular   invocation of CMD EXE with the  F ON or  F OFF switch  You can enable   or disable completion for all invocations of CMD EXE on a machine   and or user logon session by setting either or both of the following   REG DWORD values in the registry using REGEDIT EXE   HKEY LOCAL MACHINE Software Microsoft Command Processor CompletionChar HKEY LOCAL MACHINE Software Microsoft Command Processor PathCompletionChar      and or  HKEY CURRENT USER Software Microsoft Command Processor CompletionChar HKEY CURRENT USER Software Microsoft Command Processor PathCompletionChar       with the hex value of a control character to use for a particular   function  e g  0x4 is Ctrl-D and 0x6 is Ctrl-F   The user specific   settings take precedence over the machine settings  The command line   switches take precedence over the registry settings       If completion is enabled with the  F ON switch  the two control   characters used are Ctrl-D for directory name completion and Ctrl-F   for file name completion  To disable a particular completion   character in the registry  use the value for space  0x20  as it is not   a valid control character

User · Answer

If it helps you can embed a tab character in a double quoted string   PS gt    t hello

User · Answer

Test with  char 9  such as    Tab    char 9 Write-Output   Tab hello    Output        hello

[windows] How do I type a TAB character in PowerShell?

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