> Please explain why using a whitespace character such as tab as the > delimiter is unworkable.
Because most shells will consolidate multiple consecutive whitespace fields into a single field. Blank fields become unworkable. > My definition of parsable input means I can write a script like > this in sh: > > dladm -o state,over | while read a b; do > echo "a=$a,b=$b" > done That works, just set IFS=| -- meem
