Finding out how many spaces a tab character is expended to

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Madison Kelly <linux-5ZoueyuiTZhBDgjK7y7TUQ at public.gmane.org>

| 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.

The standard behaviour of a UNIX TTY since I've first used it (1975)
has been: tabs every 8 columns.

The program expand(1) will expand tabs for you.  It's documentation is
crap.

Also look at termios(3) where it describes TAB3 (the setting which
causes the tty driver to expand tabs).

The Linux man pages are a mess.  I don't know where this should be
documented.  Somewhere in section 4.  Existing man pages tell you to
refer to non-existant pages.  Yuck.
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