The difference between a Tab and a newline is that tab is a universally
recognized single ascii character while newline is in flux. Aside from this,
a tab is a quasi-viewable character as the cursor will not go to the middle
of the tab. Meaning if the tab takes up the space of 10 characters, you
could not scroll to the place where the 5th character would be if it were in
fact 10 spaces. You cannot highlight half of a tab in editors that allow
text highlighting. I would therefore say that a tab is as visible as a space
and can be easily differentiated. On the other hand, it is impossible to
determine which binary charcters the editor stuck in at the end of a newline
without looking at the binary/hex code.
I understand the complexity of dealing with multiple operating systems, but
seriously, how many non-viewable characters can be embedded in text that
actually make a difference between operating systems? Are there any besides
newline?
Sim
"Tom Lane" <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote in message
news:8379.1111600299@sss.pgh.pa.us...
> "Sim Zacks" <sim@compulab.co.il> writes:
> > A query written on any client should return the same result. The query
being
> > the visible appearance on the screen.
>
> This is presupposing the answer to the question at hand. I do not agree
> with the above premise; it would seem to imply, for example, expanding
> tabs to spaces so that "where foo = '<tab>'" yields the same result as
> "where foo = ' '" for some appropriate number of spaces.
>
> regards, tom lane
>
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