Re: textutils 2.[01]: "fmt --prefix=TAB" doesn't work

[Bob Proulx]

Haakon Riiser wrote:
> >> Steps to reproduce:
> >> 
> >>   $ fmt --prefix=TAB <<EOF
> >>   TABfoo
> >>   TABbar
> >>   EOF
> > Thanks for that very nicely crafted example.        But I can't
> > reproduce the problem using either the older fmt from textutils
> > or the fmt from the newest coreutils.  It works for me.
> 
> It's almost insulting to suggest this, but are you sure you
> entered the TABs correctly?

You have offended my honor!  It shall be rapiers at dawn.  Chuckle,
chuckle.

Well, I certainly was able to type in T, A, B, just as in your example
and in my counter example.  I actually used cut-n-paste.  But I did
not try to introduce a decimal 9 character in the ascii charset.  Your
example after all did not seem to be talking about that.  I just took
your example at face value.  :-)

> For example, one could easily be confused by trying something like
> this:
>   --prefix=`printf '\t'`

Yes, a common topic of discussion.  Here are the two common ways of
creating ascii tabs on the comand line.  The first is maximally
portable back to very old systems and are preferred by some on the
list.  The second is my preferred method on modern systems.

  TAB=`awk 'BEGIN{printf "\t";}'`
  TAB=$(printf "\t")

Since Jim provided more detail I will just bow out at this point.

Bob