> Genera knows the actual type of everything

I have this side-project fantasy of a very simple terminal pipe-types project. The basic idea is a set of very basic standardized types, demarcated using escape sequences. Dates, filenames, URLs, numbers, possibly one or two number units as well (time periods, file sizes only).

Tools that already produce columnar data (ls) get a flag that lets them output this format, and tools that work with piped data (cut, sort, uniq) get equivalents or modes that let them easily work with this.

Essentially, simple typed tables held in text, with enhancements for existing tooling to know how to deal with it. Would make my day-to-day on the command line much easier.