Character used to separate one data field from another.

Controls the manner in which an input line is broken into fields. In the shell, the field separator is stored in the variable IFS. In awk the field separator is stored in the awk variable FS. Both the shell and awk use the default value of Space and Tab for the field separator.

(n.) The character that is used to separate one field from the next. A string of one or more spaces is the usual field separator.