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From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: sort with a tab as separator
Message-ID: <13617@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 19 Aug 90 02:22:15 GMT
References: <1990Aug17.185300.159@midway.uchicago.edu>
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, APG, MD.
Lines: 10

In article <1990Aug17.185300.159@midway.uchicago.edu> phd_ivo@gsbacd.uchicago.edu writes:
>I just figured out that it is my shell that actually translates tabs into
>spaces.  So, now I need a way to quote a tab (no, quotation marks or
>backslash quoting don't work)...

So get a real shell:
	$ echo '   ' | od -c
	0000000  \t  \n
	0000002
	$