Change the number to change the number of spaces. Leaving it out defaults to 8. Leaving out the filename defaults to stdin. And to do it in reverse, you can use the unexpand command.
Any thoughts on this command? Does it work on your machine? Can you do the same thing with only 14 characters?
You must be signed in to comment.
commandlinefu.com is the place to record those command-line gems that you return to again and again. That way others can gain from your CLI wisdom and you from theirs too. All commands can be commented on, discussed and voted up or down.
Every new command is wrapped in a tweet and posted to Twitter. Following the stream is a great way of staying abreast of the latest commands. For the more discerning, there are Twitter accounts for commands that get a minimum of 3 and 10 votes - that way only the great commands get tweeted.
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu3
» http://twitter.com/commandlinefu10
Use your favourite RSS aggregator to stay in touch with the latest commands. There are feeds mirroring the 3 Twitter streams as well as for virtually every other subset (users, tags, functions,…):
Subscribe to the feed for:
"a<tab>b<tab>c" should expand to "a<space>b<space>c"
"d<tab><tab>e" should expand to "d<space><space><space>e"
Then all three columns line up. The only sensible solution is to use the expand command:expand -t 2 < yourfile