[xashor]

We took the wrong path quite some time ago. Most of the POSIX utils like sort, cut, grep only support \n (or sometimes \0) as row separator.

[jlgaddis]

Are you aware of $IFS?

[xashor]

I think $IFS is only used by the shell (with read and expansions), not by e.g. sort. It is so at least on my system.