man > Text::Tabs

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.