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.

perl v5.38.2                                       2025-07-25                                  Text::Tabs(3perl)