> you know any actual tab character in the input is a field separator, and then you can go through the fields to put back the escaped ones The "\t" in "split"

> you know any actual tab character in the input is a field separator, and then you can go through the fields to put back the escaped ones The "\t" in "split" is not a "slash-tee" but an actual tab character and then escape sequences in fields are handled by the "unescape" function.