Finding out how many spaces a tab character is expended to

[Madison Kelly]

Alex Beamish wrote:
> On 10/29/07, John McGregor <mr.mcgregor-bJEeYj9oJeDQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>> According to this document, the default no. of spaces for tab in Perl is
>> 4 (line 141), but other references I saw in a cursory search for
>> 'default  number of spaces for tab in perl'  showed that the default is
>> 8 or that it is arbitrary.
>>
>> http://search.cpan.org/src/DMUEY/Text-InHTML-v0.0.3/lib/Text/InHTML.pm
> 
> Asking how many spaces a tab expands to on a mailing list is about as
> safe as prodding a sleeping dragon. Historically, the answer has been
> 8, but that's by no means definitive.
> 
> I think the correct answer is "Whatever turns out looking right",
> which means the answer is arbitrary.

Heh, vi vs emacs type question, eh?

However, I am not asking what *should* it expand to, but rather what 
does the current shell/terminal/user use at the point in time when the 
program is run.

Madi
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