column -ts '<TAB>' misaligns tab delimited files

[unode]

 column -ts '<TAB>' <(echo "<TAB>col1<TAB>col2\nrow<TAB>1<TAB>2")

where <TAB> is a literal TAB character introduced with Ctrl+v Tab, produces:

col1  col2
row   1     2

instead of the correct:

     col1  col2
row  1     2

which is produced if instead of a <TAB> a , is used:

 column -ts ',' <(echo ",col1,col2\nrow,1,2")

     col1  col2
row  1     2

The cause seems to be that the <TAB> character is considered 'whitespace' and is stripped from the beginning of the line, causing the alignment shift.

[karelzak]

Yes, column(1) ignores space chars at the begin of the input line. Fixed. Let's hope it does not introduce any regression.

echo -e "\tcol1\tcol2\nrow\t1\t2" | ./column -t -s "$(echo -e '\t')"  --table-columns A,B,C
A    B     C
     col1  col2
row  1     2