-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On May 17, 2006, at 8:46 PM, Edward Elliott wrote:
> Dave Hansen wrote: > >> On Wed, 17 May 2006 17:28:26 GMT in comp.lang.python, Edward Elliott >>> Just for the sake of completeness: >>> >>> cat file |sed 's/\t/ /g' >> >> That doesn't always work. If you don't see why, you don't understand >> my objection to TAB characters in text files. >> >>> less -x4 file >> >> That will work. As long as the creator of file used four-space TABs, >> anyway... > > I fail to see why less 'will work' but cat 'doesn't always work'. > The net > effect of both is the same. Unless you're in some weird place that > pipes > aren't allowed, these should be equivalent: I don't think that cat is the problem, it's sed. The problem is that tabs take you to the next tab stop, they don't expand to a fixed number of spaces. Consider the strings "\t\t", "\t \t", and "\t \t". With everything except one- or two-space tab settings (less -x1 or less -x2), the spaces haven't moved us past a tab stop, so the \t after them takes us to the same tab stop in all cases. Take care, Bill -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (Darwin) iD8DBQFEa62XDJT2Egh26K0RAhFUAJ0WWgTRS570DsHAUl0oij47qNoIfgCgiVyV 9vZQUBAOspWLfuom2Scy4MY= =wmWa -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list