Re: TAB character in groff output

[G. Branden Robinson]

At 2022-08-02T15:44:21+0200, Ingo Schwarze wrote:
> In groff, this works for me:
> 
>  $ printf "a\\\\N'9'b" | groff -T ascii | hexdump -C | head -n 1
> 00000000  61 09 62 0a 0a 0a 0a 0a  0a 0a 0a 0a 0a 0a 0a 0a  |a.b.............|
> 
> Mandoc behaves differently and treats \N'9' exactly like a literal HT:
> 
>  $ printf "a\\\\N'9'b" | mandoc | hexdump -C | grep 61
> 00000050  61 20 20 20 20 62 0a 0a  20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20  |a    b..        |
> 
> In general, mandoc lets fewer control characters sneak through into
> output than groff because i worry that control characters in output
> might occasionally cause reliability or security issues.

I don't predict high reliability from this technique when attempting
it on a platform that uses IBM code page 1047 as its input encoding. ;-)

Regards,
Branden

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