Re: sort does not use tab as delimiter

[Jim Meyering]

The Wanderer <address@hidden> wrote:
>> The Wanderer <address@hidden> writes:
>>> Note also that this may not be possible in some shells
>>> (specifically, so far as I've been able to discover, bash),
>> Of course it works in bash.  You can enter every character literally
>> with C-v.
>
> I've never used Ctrl-V to paste in Linux except in Mozilla, and frankly,
> I don't think I'd have expected it to work outside of things like
> OpenOffice and so forth (i.e., graphical applications, mostly
> Windows-alikes). I've always used "highlight and middle-click",
> particularly in xterms, and that very definitely does not allow the
> literal entry of tabs into bash.
>
> Actually, I just tested - entered a tab in this mail, copied it with
> Ctrl-C, attempted to paste it into an xterm with Ctrl-V. No result.
>
> If you can shed light on a way to accomplish it which *does* work in my
> environment, I'd be pleased to know it.

At the command line, type the following (where C-v means Ctrl-v):

  $ echo 'C-vTAB'|od -c

it'll display like this:

  $ echo '      '|od -c

Here's the output I get:

  0000000  \t  \n
  0000002