[olug] Unix Tip: MAKING TAB WORK

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			      UNIX GURU UNIVERSE 
			         UNIX HOT TIP

			Unix Tip 2189 - December 29, 2002

		    http://www.ugu.com/sui/ugu/show?tip.today

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MAKING TAB WORK

THE PROBLEM: 

How do you insert a 
character in the 
command line whose 
key has special
significance to the 
shell(csh/tcsh)?  

For example say I want 
to join 2 tab delimited 
files.  What I want to 
say is this:

join -t"<TAB>" file1 file2

Of course, when you 
type the tab key or ^I 
the shell just beeps 
because it thinks you 
want a complete a 
filename. Many commands 
will not interperet "\t" 
as a tab.

THE SOLUTION:

^V (CTRL-V) will cause 
the next key press to be 
interpreted literally.  
So to enter the command 
described above you would 
type the following:

join -t"<CTRL-V><TAB>" file1 file2.

Problem solved!




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