tabs: Setting Terminal Tabs

The tabs command is used to specify and set hardware tab stops on terminals that have remotely-settable tab stops.

The tabs command is used to specify and set hardware tab stops on terminals that have remotely-settable tab stops.

tabs [options] tab-specification 

Options

The options supported by GNU tabs are:

-T termtype

--terminal=termtype

Specify the terminal type, overriding the environment variable TERM.

-V

--version

Show the version number of GNU tabs and exit.

-h

--help

Show the command line usage of GNU tabs and exit.

Tab Specification

GNU tabs accepts the following types of tab specification:

n1[,n2,...]

Set tab stops at columns n1, n2, ... The leftmost column is the column 1. n2 and the rest of the list can be of the form `+num', in which case it specifies the increment from the tab stop last specified by the list.

-n

Set tab stops at every n columns. For most of the terminals, the standard tab stop setting is the equivalent of `-8'.

-code

--code=code

-C code

Set tab stops using one of the "canned" specification. The second and the third formats are useful if the name of the canned specification conflicts with one of the long options supportred by GNU tabs.

--filename

--file=filename

--F filename

Read the first line of filename, find parameters separated by blanks enclosed by <: and :> on that line, find a parameter that begins with t, and then use it as tab specification. If any of the above steps fails, set tab stops to every 8 columns. The second and the third formats are useful if the name of the file conflicts with one of the long options supportred by GNU tabs.

Canned tab specifications

GNU tabs supports the following "canned" specifications:

`a'

Assembler, IBM S/370, first format (1,10,16,36,72)

`a2'

Assembler, IBM S/370, second format (1,10,16,40,72)

`c'

COBOL, normal format (1,8,12,16,20,55)

`c2'

COBOL, compact format (1,6,10,14,49)

`c3'

COBOL, compact format with more tab stops@hfill@break (1,6,10,14,18,22,26,30,34,38,42,46,50,54,58,62,67)

`f'

FORTRAN (1,7,11,15,19,23)

`p'

PL/I (1,5,9,13,17,21,25,29,33,37,41,45,49,53,57,61)

`s'

SNOBOL (1,10,55)

`u'

UNIVAC 1100 Assembler (1,12,20,44)

Examples

To set tab stops for editing FORTRAN programs on an xterm, use the following tabs command:

tabs -f --terminal=xterm

Another example: a source file of FORTRAN program may contain its own tab specification on its first line:

C <: t1,7,11,15,19,23,72 :>

Before editing this file, the tabs command can be used to set tab stops to columns this file expects:

tabs --Sample.f

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