Paste <TAB> into Mac OS X command line

Question

I want to paste <TAB> into command line, in order to execute cut command with <TAB> as the delimiter. Everytime I try to do it, it simulates clicking the tab key and completes the command with some file(-s) from the current directory.

Is there any solution (I've tried copying straight from text editor)?

Mac OS X 10.7.5, running bash.

Answer 1

You can insert a literal tab by pressing Ctrl-v (quoted-insert) and tab.

You can insert tabs in strings with $'\t':

cut -f2 <<< $'aa\tbb'

Or use pbpaste:

pbpaste | cut -f2

This makes tab just insert a tab:

bind '"\t": self-insert'

If you use option as meta, adding this to ~/.inputrc would make ⌥⇥ insert a tab:

"\e\t": "\C-v\t"