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This article is about how to use the expand and unexpand commands in linux. The editor thinks it is very practical, so share it with you as a reference and follow the editor to have a look.

Example of expand command

As I mentioned earlier, the expand command replaces TAB characters in the file with spaces.

Now, let's convert the TAB in ostechnix.txt to spaces and write the result to standard output:

$expand ostechnix.txt

If you don't want to display the results in standard output, just write it to another file, as shown below.

$expand ostechnix.txt > output.txt

We can also convert TAB in standard input to spaces. To do this, simply run the expand command without the file name:

$expand

Simply type the text and press enter to convert TAB to spaces. Press CTRL+C to exit.

If you do not want to convert TAB after non-white space characters, use the-I flag, as shown below.

$expand-I ostechnix.txt

We can also set each TAB to the width of the specified number instead of 8 (the default).

$expand-tasking 5 ostechnix.txt

We can even specify multiple TAB locations separated by commas, as shown below.

$expand-t 5je 10je 15 ostechnix.txt

Or

$expand-t "5 10 15" ostechnix.txt

For more details, see the man pages.

Example of the $man expandunexpand command

As you may have guessed, the unexpand command does the opposite of the expand command. That is, it converts spaces to TAB. Let me show you some examples of how to use the unexpand command.

To convert white space (spaces, of course) in a file to TAB and write the output to standard output:

$unexpand ostechnix.txt

If you want to write the output to a file instead of just displaying it to standard output, use the following command:

$unexpand ostechnix.txt > output.txt

Read from standard output and convert spaces to tabs:

$unexpand

By default, the unexpand command converts only the initial spaces. If you want to convert all spaces instead of just spaces at the beginning of a line, use the-a flag:

$unexpand-an ostechnix.txt

Convert only the spaces at the beginning of the line (note that it overrides-a):

$unexpand-first-only ostechnix.txt

Replace how many spaces with a TAB instead of 8 (- an is enabled):

$unexpand-t 5 ostechnix.txt

Similarly, we can specify multiple TAB locations separated by commas.

$unexpand-t 5je 10je 15 ostechnix.txt

Or

$unexpand-t "5 10 15" ostechnix.txt

For more details, see the man pages.

$man unexpand

The expand and unexpand commands are useful for replacing unwanted TAB with spaces when working with a large number of files, and vice versa.

Thank you for reading! This is the end of the article on "how to use expand and unexpand commands in linux". I hope the above content can be of some help to you, so that you can learn more knowledge. if you think the article is good, you can share it for more people to see!

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