OT: Collecting data in text files

[Abner Gershon <abner_gershon@yahoo.com>]

I have am currently dual booting to debian and would
like to change to rely more on debian and related
applications.

I currently collect lists of information on many
topics such as restaurants, phone lists, file folders,
slides using a database program, Lotus approach. Since
I am the only user of this information I thought I
could record this information in text files using vim
and then use gawk and sed to access this data.

I have done a little reading on how these programs
work and would like to know if it is generally better
to seperate columns with spaces or tabs for this
purpose and if this would be the most appropriate
technique for collecting and organizing such data.

I realize this does not pertain directly to the debian
os and would appreciate direction to more appropriate
mailing list if anyone knows one.


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