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Full Discussion: Passing literal tab character from zsh to other program
Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Passing literal tab character from zsh to other program Post 303007001 by Don Cragun on Thursday 9th of November 2017 02:02:11 PM
Old 11-09-2017
While $'\t' is easy to read and works in many current shells, it isn't in the standards yet and is not implemented by many shells in common use. Standard ways that should be supported by any shell based on Bourne shell syntax include:
Code:
utility_name "	" # where there is a literal tab character between the double-quote characters
utility_name '	' # where there is a literal tab character between the single-quote characters
utility_name "$(printf '\t')" # for modern shells
utility_name "$(printf '\011')" # for modern shells
utility_name "`printf '\t'`" # for 1980's vintage Bourne shells

and, of course, you can define a variable using any of those forms:
Code:
tab="	"
tab='	'
tab="$(printf '\t')"
tab="$(printf '\011')"
tab="`printf '\t'`"

and then use:
Code:
utility_name "$tab"

 

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LEARN ABOUT DEBIAN

freebsd-yyfix

YYFIX(1)						    BSD General Commands Manual 						  YYFIX(1)

NAME

     yyfix -- extract tables from y.tab.c

SYNOPSIS

     yyfix file [tables]

DESCRIPTION

     Programs have historically used a script (often named ``:yyfix'') to extract tables from the yacc(1) generated file y.tab.c.  As the names of
     the tables generated by the current version of yacc(1) are different from those of historical versions of yacc(1), the shell script yyfix is
     provided to simplify the transition.

     The first (and required) argument to yyfix is the name of the file where the extracted tables should be stored.

     If further command line arguments are specified, they are taken as the list of tables to be extracted.  Otherwise, yyfix attempts to deter-
     mine if the y.tab.c file is from an old or new yacc(1), and extracts the appropriate tables.

     The tables ``yyexca'', ``yyact'', ``yypact'', ``yypgo'', ``yyr1'', ``yyr2'', ``yychk'', and ``yydef'' are extracted from historical versions
     of yacc(1).

     The tables ``yylhs'', ``yylen'', ``yydefred'', ``yydgoto'', ``yysindex'', ``yyrindex'', ``yygindex'', ``yytable'', ``yyname'', ``yyrule'',
     and ``yycheck'', are extracted from the current version of yacc(1).

FILES

     y.tab.c  File from which tables are extracted.

SEE ALSO

     yacc(1)

HISTORY

     The yyfix command first appeared in 4.4BSD.

BSD
								  March 23, 1993							       BSD
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