EXPAND(1) BSD General Commands Manual EXPAND(1)

NAME
     eexxppaanndd, uunneexxppaanndd - expand tabs to spaces, and vice versa

SYNOPSIS
     eexxppaanndd [-tt tab1,tab2,...,tabn] [file ...]
     uunneexxppaanndd [-aa] [-tt tab1,tab2,...,tabn] [file ...]

DESCRIPTION
     The eexxppaanndd utility processes the named files or the standard input writ-
     ing the standard output with tabs changed into blanks.  Backspace charac-
     ters are preserved into the output and decrement the column count for tab
     calculations.  The eexxppaanndd utility is useful for pre-processing character
     files (before sorting, looking at specific columns, etc.) that contain
     tabs.

     The uunneexxppaanndd 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:

     -aa      (uunneexxppaanndd only.)  By default, only leading blanks and tabs are
             reconverted to maximal strings of tabs.  If the -aa option is
             given, then tabs are inserted whenever they would compress the
             resultant file by replacing two or more characters.

     -tt tab1,tab2,...,tabn
             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, LCALL and LCCTYPE environment variables affect the execution
     of eexxppaanndd and uunneexxppaanndd as described in environ(7).

DIAGNOSTICS     The eexxppaanndd and uunneexxppaanndd utilities exit 0 on success, and >0 if an error
     occurs.

STANDARDS
     The eexxppaanndd and uunneexxppaanndd utilities conform to IEEE Std 1003.1-2001
     (``POSIX.1'').

HISTORY     The eexxppaanndd command appeared in 3.0BSD.

BSD                             April 21, 2002                             BSD