EXPAND(1) |
FreeBSD General Commands Manual |
EXPAND(1) |
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
The
expand 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
-
(
unexpand only.) By default, only leading blanks and tabs are reconverted to maximal strings of tabs. If the
-a option is given, then tabs are inserted whenever they would compress the resultant file by replacing two or more characters.
-
-t
-Sm
tab1,
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 command appeared in
3.0BSD.