Unix expand/unexpand commands

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The external expand command expands tabs to spaces. The expand command reads the named files or the standard input, changes the tabs to the appropriate number of blanks, and writes the results on the standard output.

You use the expand command to convert tab characters to the appropriate number of spaces. You may find expand useful to preprocess character files that contain tabs before performing character processing on the files. For example, you may want to remove tabs before sorting or examining specific columns of a file.

The external unexpand command replaces leading spaces and tabs with just tabs where possible.

Following is the general format of the expand command.

     expand   [ -tabstop | -tab1,tab2,tab3,...,tabn ] [ file_list ]
     unexpand [ -a ] [ file_list ]

Options

The following options may be used to control how expand functions.

-tabstop	Sets tab stops tabstop spaces apart.
-tab1,.,tabn	Sets tabs at specific tab positions defined by tab1 through tabn.
-a	Tabs are inserted at all occurrences that would replace two or more spaces. Without the -a option unexpand only replaces leading blanks and tabs.

Arguments

The following argument may be passed to the expand command.

file_list

The list of files read and processed by expand. If no files are specified expand reads the standard input.

Examples

In this activity you use the expand command to remove tabs from a file containing tab-separated columns. Begin at the shell prompt.

1. Type cat -v -t file1 and press Return. Notice the ^I (tabs) embedded in the output.

2. Type expand file1 | cat -v -t and press Return. Notice the output has no tabs in it.

3. Turn to Module 143 to continue the learning sequence.

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Last modified: September 15, 2008