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About expand and unexpand
Syntax
Examples
Related commands
Linux / Unix main page
About expand and unexpand
Expand copies files (or the standard input) to the
standard output, with TAB characters expanded to SPACE characters. BACKSPACE characters are preserved into the output and decrement the column count for TAB calculations. expand is useful for pre-processing character files (before sorting, looking at specific columns, and so forth) that contain TAB characters.
Syntax
expand [ -t tablist ] [-tabstop] [-tab1, tab2,. .
., tabn] [ file ... ]
unexpand [ -a ] [ -t tablist ] [ file ... ]
| -t tablist |
Specify the tab stops. The argument tablist must consist of a single positive decimal integer or multiple positive decimal integers, separated by
blank characters or commas, in ascending order. If a single number is given, tabs will be set tablist
column positions apart instead of the default 8. If multiple numbers are given, the tabs will be
set at those specific column positions.
Each tab-stop position N must be an integer value greater than zero, and the list must be in strictly ascending order. This is taken to mean
that, from the start of a line of output, tabbing to position N causes the next character output to
be in the (N+1)th column position on that line.
In the event of expand having to process a tab character at a position beyond the last of those specified in a multiple tab-stop list, the tab
character is replaced by a single space character in the output.
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| tabstop |
Specify as a single argument, sets TAB characters tabstop SPACE characters apart instead of the default 8. |
| tab1, tab2,..., tabn |
Set TAB characters at the columns specified by
-tab1,tab2,...,tabn |
| -a |
Insert TAB characters when replacing a run of two or more SPACE characters would produce a smaller output file. |
| file |
The path name of a text file to be used as input. |
Examples
expand myfile.txt
Would expand the file myfile.txt
expand -8 myfile.txt > myfile2.txt
Converts the tabs in the file myfile.txt to 8 spaces
instead of a single tab.
Related commands
tabs
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