[colug-432] Nice Plain Text Columns and Avoiding NIH: $'\t'

[jep200404 at columbus.rr.com]

On Mon, 8 Aug 2011 12:34:14 -0400, Seth Hall <seth at icir.org> wrote:

> ... It's like "learn a new shell trick"-day. :)

Yup. Me too. 

I did not know about how the leading $'\t' technique. 
It's time for me to RTFM. 

In my ignorance, I did -s '\t' with disappointing results, 
then -s '<ctrl-v><tab>' with success, before investigating 
Rick's leading '$' to try -s $'\t' with success (of course, 
Rick followed up with the same). 

> When I'm doing log processing, it tends to be all interactive 
> so <ctrl-v><tab> is nicer, but it's good to know the other 
> technique too.

<ctrl-v><tab> is fine for interactive command line use, 
but is evil invisible magic in scripts. 
Rick's leading '$' makes scripts sane.