NAME

       Text::Tabs - expand and unexpand tabs like unix expand(1) and unexpand(1)

SYNOPSIS

         use Text::Tabs;

         $tabstop = 4;  # default = 8
         @lines_without_tabs = expand(@lines_with_tabs);
         @lines_with_tabs = unexpand(@lines_without_tabs);

DESCRIPTION

       Text::Tabs does most of what the unix utilities expand(1) and unexpand(1) do.  Given a
       line with tabs in it, "expand" replaces those tabs with the appropriate number of spaces.
       Given a line with or without tabs in it, "unexpand" adds tabs when it can save bytes by
       doing so, like the "unexpand -a" command.

       Unlike the old unix utilities, this module correctly accounts for any Unicode combining
       characters (such as diacriticals) that may occur in each line for both expansion and
       unexpansion.  These are overstrike characters that do not increment the logical position.
       Make sure you have the appropriate Unicode settings enabled.

EXPORTS

       The following are exported:

       expand
       unexpand
       $tabstop
           The $tabstop variable controls how many column positions apart each tabstop is.  The
           default is 8.

           Please note that "local($tabstop)" doesn't do the right thing and if you want to use
           "local" to override $tabstop, you need to use "local($Text::Tabs::tabstop)".

EXAMPLE

         #!perl
         # unexpand -a
         use Text::Tabs;

         while (<>) {
           print unexpand $_;
         }

       Instead of the shell's "expand" command, use:

         perl -MText::Tabs -n -e 'print expand $_'

       Instead of the shell's "unexpand -a" command, use:

         perl -MText::Tabs -n -e 'print unexpand $_'

BUGS

       Text::Tabs handles only tabs ("\t") and combining characters ("/\pM/").  It doesn't count
       backwards for backspaces ("\t"), omit other non-printing control characters ("/\pC/"), or
       otherwise deal with any other zero-, half-, and full-width characters.

LICENSE

       Copyright (C) 1996-2002,2005,2006 David Muir Sharnoff.  Copyright (C) 2005 Aristotle
       Pagaltzis Copyright (C) 2012-2013 Google, Inc.  This module may be modified, used, copied,
       and redistributed at your own risk.  Although allowed by the preceding license, please do
       not publicly redistribute modified versions of this code with the name "Text::Tabs" unless
       it passes the unmodified Text::Tabs test suite.