\t works on irb but not in my ruby script

I have 2 path variables as per below: path1 = "../home/result_file.erb" path2 = "../my_folder/Data_file.erb"

I create an anchor tag links sting to pass it to my erb file. The string code is:

    file_links_string = "<a href='#{path1}'>Result Report</a>\t\t\t<a href='#{path2}'>Data Report</a>"
    p file_links_string

When I do puts "<a href='../home/result_file.erb'>Result Report</a>\t\t\t<a href='../my_folder/Data_file.erb'>Data Report</a>" on irb, it prints the two href tags with tab spaces in between.

But my p file_links_string prints "<a href='../home/result_file.erb'>Result Report</a>\t\t\t<a href='../my_folder/Data_file.erb'>Data Report</a>" on console. Looks like it considers '\t' as a string.

On my webpage I am getting Result Report and Data Report next to each other without tab spaces in between.

Am I creating the string incorrectly? Or do I need to add anything? I am using 2.1.1 ruby.