Powershell set-content adding hidden characters

Question

Following scenario:

Set-Content $healthStatusFileName "a 'r'n a"  
$previousHealthStatus=$(Get-Content $healthStatusFileName )  
$errorMessage = "a 'r'n a" 


If ($previousHealthStatus -eq $errorMessage)

Now for some reason the if statement always returns false, why? It only happens when having the carriage return line feed in the string. Also, doing this before the If does not help:

$previousHealthStatus = $previousHealthStatus -replace "'t|'n|'r",""
$errorMessage = $errorMessage -replace "'t|'n|'r",""

Answer 1

Get-Content returns an array, so you are comparing a string with an array. Join the array with

`r`n

so you get the equivalent of your initial string.

Set-Content $healthStatusFileName "a `r`n a"  
$previousHealthStatus=$(Get-Content $healthStatusFileName ) -join "`r`n"
$errorMessage = "a `r`n a" 
($previousHealthStatus -eq $errorMessage)

result is:

True