csv - unix join separator char

Question

Sorry for the maybe trivial question.

I fought a bit with the unix join command, trying to get tabs instead of whitespaces as the default separators. -t is the argument, but these don't work (ubuntu 9.10 64 bit 2.6.31-14, GNU coreutils version 7.4)

join file1 file2 -t""
join file1 file2 -t=""
join file1 file2 -t="\t"
join file1 file2 -t $""

Et cetera. Of course, I can always use some inelegant solution like

join file1 file2 > output
sed "s/ //g" output

But I wanted to look smart :-) Moreover, if there's a -t argument, it must work.

Answer 1

I think it takes a variable generated on-the-fly

Try

join file1 file12 -t $''