Better tab use with bash

I use tab delimited files a lot. I hate comma separated values (and if you've ever had to deal with fields that could contain commas, you'll agree). If you like to use a good set of linux command line tools, then tabs sometimes cause problems.

One of the most viewed posts on this blog is the unix-join-with-tabs one where I describe the "Ctrl-v " method of inserting a tab character on the command line for things like cut -f':' --output-delimiter=<tab> where the output delimiter needs to be a tab.

However, there's a much nicer/easier way of specifying a tab character in bash: $'\t'. Take a look a the QUOTING section of the bash manpage for all the details.

Here's a simple example of it in action:

	echo -e "second:first" |\
	cut -d: --output-delimiter=$'\t' -f 1,2 |\
	awk -F $'\t' 'BEGIN{OFS=FS}{print $2,$1}'
	# outputs: "first<tab>second"

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