How do convert tabs to spaces in a file using a bash shell?
You can use various tools. The expand command converts all tabs to spaces. It preserves backspace characters in the output; they decrement the column count for
tab calculations.
expand input.file > output.file expand data.txt > output.txt expand -t 2 data.txt > output.txt
The -t option can be used to set comma separated list of explicit tab positions. You can use the unexpand command convert spaces to tabs. See man page for more info:
man expand
man unexpand
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
My imput.file looks like:
$ cat input.file
tux Linux
tux Linux
tux Linux
tux Linux
$
But executing expand on the file showing the same format(in STDOUT) as input.file…
$ expand input.file
tux Linux
tux Linux
tux Linux
tux Linux
$
Though I am getting the expected result with “tr” command.
I am using CentOS 5.3(x86_64); Any comment ?
You can also use perl:
perl -pi -e ‘s/\t/ /’ file.name
:retab
for vim.
s are truncated in my posts itself :)
expand fails miserably on multibyte characters (i.e. on non-ASCII characters in UTF-8 encoding)
still as of coreutils 8.21 (2013)