Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You are considering it just RAW text when it is actually formatted text that has been parsable for years with common unix command line tools. Parsing command output with sed/awk/etc (ie. "common unix command line tools") is absolutely an ad hoc parser. Let me give you an example that I recently ran into. I have a tool that parses the output of "readelf -sW", which dumps symbols and their sizes. The output normally…
The Unix answer is why are you using a regex on tab-separated values? Wrong tool for the job. Of course the problem with Unix is that there are a thousand different semi-structured text formats, edge cases, and tools that must be mastered before you can make any sense of it all. Any time you point out the pain a Unix fan can just respond by pointing out your ignorance.
They aren't tab-separated. There are no tabs in readelf output.
Also if you assume they are space-separated, note that the first few lines look like this:
Symbol table '.dynsym' contains 164 entries:
Num: Value Size Type Bind Vis Ndx Name
0: 0000000000000000 0 NOTYPE LOCAL DEFAULT UND
> respond by pointing out your ignorance.Indeed.