PowerShell Here String

Here String

This is a short blog on Here String. I decided to write down about this since I wanted to share the experiences with PowerShell features, that I heavily use.

I commonly use the following type of code to store large strings in a variable.

 

$data=@"
{
  "@odata.id": "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/directoryObjects/$($userID)"
}
"@

Why do I use the above instead of using a normal string?

$data="{
  "@odata.id": "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/directoryObjects/$($userID)"
}"

Reasons:

1.The above code throws error due to the presence of string with double quotes

2. Using back ` is terrible for strings with many double quotes .

What was I doing to allow double quotes and have large strings declared in a variable?

I used @ at the end and beginning of the string and the string was able to store large data.

I did not know that the term used for this feature was Here string until I read various msdn blogs on PowerShell and came to know the Here String term.

What is Here String?

A simple String that allows you to declare multi ling string along with Quotes and variable values.

Make sure that you have a line break after the first @", else the following command throws error:

$HereString=@"My
"life"
is
in
my hands"@

The following code works correctly

$when="Always"
$HereString=@"
My
"life"
is
in
my hands $when
"@

Below the output:

My
"life"
is
in
my hands Always