notabs(1) General Commands Manual notabs(1)
NAME
notabs - convert all tab characters to spaces in text files
SYNOPSIS
notabs [-h(elp)] [-f filelist] [-m max_filesize] [-p(ipe)] [-q(uiet)]
[-t tab_width] [-v(erbose)] file...
DESCRIPTION
notabs converts all tab characters to spaces in text file using
Python's expandtabs() method.
OPTIONS
-h Print help and quit.
-f file_list
Read the names of files to be processed from the specified file.
-m max_filesize
Skip processing of files larger than the specified size to avoid
running out of RAM. The default value is 1073741824 bytes,
i.e., 1 GiB.
-p Read the names of files to be processed from stdin.
-q Quiet output. No output commentary will be printed.
-t tab_width
Set the assumed spacing between tabs. The default value is 8.
-v Verbose output. Commentary about unchanged files will be
printed in addition to the normal commentary about changed
files.
EXAMPLES
Remove tabs from a couple of files:
notabs file01.txt file02.txt
Remove tabs from a large block of source code:
find . -name "*.c" -print | notabs -p
find . -name "*.h" -print | notabs -p
NOTES
If notabs appears to be malfunctioning, try running it in single-
threaded mode by using the -T 1 option. This permits more meaningful
error messages to be printed.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 2004-2026 by Brian Lindholm. This program is free
software; you can use it, redistribute it, and/or modify it under the
terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
Software Foundation; either version 3, or (at your option) any later
version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
General Public License for more details.
littleutils 2026 Jan 01 notabs(1)
littleutils 1.4.0 - Generated Wed Feb 18 07:27:12 CST 2026