Sort of. Obviously, for a great many tools that wouldn't be an option because it would break compatibility for scripts that have been running for decades. And

Sort of. Obviously, for a great many tools that wouldn't be an option because it would break compatibility for scripts that have been running for decades. And \0 isn't necessarily a safe delimiter for all types of lists. But, for lists of file names (and other strings that cannot contain \0), yes, I believe that automatically using it when stdout is not connected to a terminal would be a reasonably good idea.