The main problem is using text as a common format between different applications.

First: text is not well defined. Is it ASCII? Is it UTF-8? Some programs can spew UTF-32 with proper locale configured, it's a mess.

Second: encoding and decoding of objects to text is not defined at all. Those problems with filenames is just one example. Using newline as a separator is a natural thing that is easy to implement, yet it is wrong.

In my opinion two things should be done:

1. Standardise on UTF-8. No other encodings allowed.

2. Standardise on JSON. It is good enough to serve as universal exchange format, tools like `jq` exist for some time now.

So any utility must read and write JSON objects with some standard env set. And shells can be developed with better syntax to deal with JSON. This way you can write something like

`ps aux | while read row; do echo ${row.user} ${row.pid}; done`