How does the leading dollar sign affect single quotes in Bash?

Question

I need to pass a string to a program as its argument from the Bash CLI, e.g

program \"don\'t do this\"

The string may include any character

Answer 1

It causes escape sequences to be interpreted.

$ echo $'Name\tAge\nBob\t24\nMary\t36'
Name    Age
Bob     24
Mary    36

(And SO handles tabs in a goofy manner, so try this one at home)