Text::Tabs(3pm) Perl Programmers Reference Guide Text::Tabs(3pm)
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 2023-11-28 Text::Tabs(3pm)
perl 5.38.2 - Generated Sat Dec 14 08:57:39 CST 2024