NAME
expand, unexpand
— expand tabs to spaces, and
vice versa
SYNOPSIS
expand |
[-t
tab1,tab2,...,tabn]
[file ...] |
unexpand |
[-a | -t
tab1,tab2,...,tabn]
[file ...] |
DESCRIPTION
Theexpand utility processes the named files or the
standard input writing the standard output with tabs changed into blanks.
Backspace characters are preserved into the output and decrement the column
count for tab calculations. The expand utility is
useful for pre-processing character files (before sorting, looking at specific
columns, etc.) that contain tabs.
The unexpand utility puts tabs back into
the data from the standard input or the named files and writes the result on
the standard output.
The following options are available:
-a- (
unexpandonly.) By default, only leading blanks and tabs are reconverted to maximal strings of tabs. If the-aoption is given, then tabs are inserted whenever they would compress the resultant file by replacing two or more characters. -t-Smtab1, tab2, ..., tabn Sm- Set tab stops at column positions tab1, tab2, ..., tabn. If only a single number is given, tab stops are set that number of column positions apart instead of the default number of 8.
ENVIRONMENT
The LANG, LC_ALL
and LC_CTYPE environment variables affect the
execution of expand and
unexpand as described in
environ(7).
EXIT STATUS
The expand and
unexpand utilities exit 0 on success,
and >0 if an error occurs.
STANDARDS
The expand and
unexpand utilities conform to IEEE
Std 1003.1-2001 (“POSIX.1”).
HISTORY
The expand utility first appeared in
1BSD.