[bug#30053] [PATCH 1/3] Improve appearance of tabular output.

[Steve Sprang <steve.sprang@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Jan 16, 2018 at 6:16 AM, Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> wrote:

> Again a matter of taste, but ‘cut’ looks to me both easier and simpler
> than awk (since it’s a full language).
>
> But anyway, as Danny write, if your patches retain tabs (in addition to
> spaces), presumably it’s OK even for those of us who prefer ‘cut’,
> right?

If the tab is retained I think most uses of 'cut' keep working. The
only exception I'm aware of is this:

$ guix build --quiet --keep-going \
        `guix package -A | cut -f1,2 --output-delimiter=@`

Since 'cut' splits on the tab you end up retaining the padding spaces
from field 1 resulting in, say, "guile      @2.2.3" instead of the
desired "guile@2.2.3".

-Steve