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Comments on What are field separators in operating-programming languages (such as Bash)?

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What are field separators in operating-programming languages (such as Bash)?

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The concept of field separator has some private cases in different operating system shells and their utilities (IFS on Bourne shell and derivates, RS on AWK and perhaps more) but I am having trouble understanding what is the purpose of the concept in general or which problem it was first aimed to solve.

I have personally understood that a "field separator" is any indentation character and line break character such as the following but I am not sure that's correct:

  • Indentation characters:
    • Whitespace character
    • Tabulation character
    • Other, less standard, indentation characters
  • Line break characters:
    • (non-carriage-return) Line Feed (LF)
    • Carriage Return Line Feed (CRLF)
    • Other, less standard, line break characters
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1 comment thread

`RS` in awk is the Record Separator, not the `Field Separator`. In awk `FS` is the input field separa... (1 comment)
`RS` in awk is the Record Separator, not the `Field Separator`. In awk `FS` is the input field separa...
Ed Morton‭ wrote over 2 years ago · edited over 2 years ago

RS in awk is the Record Separator, not the Field Separator. In awk FS is the input field separator (like IFS in shell) while OFS is the output field separator (no equivalent in shell).