[colug-432] Portable Visible Tabs in Shell Scripts

Scott Merrill skippy at skippy.net
Tue Aug 9 21:24:50 EDT 2011


On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 6:48 PM,  <jep200404 at columbus.rr.com> wrote:
> Unfortunately, it seems to be a bashism and to not work in
> (plain) bourne shells.
> I've been trying to find a portable way of _visibly_ putting
> tab characters in shell scripts.
> The ways that dash and bash do it seem complementary.
> Even echo behaves differently in dash and bash.

Jim, for the benefit of the class, can you elaborate on the overall
benefit of being sh-compatible? What, specifically, are your reasons
for wanting to avoid bash-isms?


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