> The fact that the whole file is then non-portable is a feature, not a bug; if you need to pack an entire table into a field, encode it in some portable encodi

> The fact that the whole file is then non-portable is a feature, not a bug; if you need to pack an entire table into a field, encode it in some portable encoding (eg base64) and add a decoder field. I guess you could: 1. Use unit-separator and record-separator for text 2. Use group-separator for (1) 3. Use file-separator for (2) > The "arguments" against this are absurd; mainly that the resulting file is not plain text and cannot be read/modified immediately by plain text editors. This ignores the fact that plain text editors already deal with control characters because they have to decide what to do with <tab>, and makes a mountain out of a molehill when the in-band horrors of escaping delimiters create trouble every single day. Could not agree more.