."\ tab.1
.TH TAB P "Manual V1.1 for Program V0.4" "Julian H. Stacey" "Julian H. Stacey, http://www.berklix.com"
.\" A4 the cludgy way.
.pl 29.6c
.UC 4
.SH NAME
tab \- Convert spaces in a file to tabs, or tabs to spaces.

.SH SYNTAX
.B tab -e/d files

.SH DESCRIPTION

.I Tab
Flags available include :-

.TP
.B \-e
entab files (convert spaces to tabs where appropriate).
.TP
.B \-d
detab files, expand all tabs back to appropriate length space sequences

.SH RESTRICTIONS
.I Tab
does not support pipes yet.
.I Tab
does not recognise embedded epson or ibm printer escape sequences
thus entabing or detabing files containing them can produce bad column alignement.

.SH EXAMPLES

tab -e fred.lst jim.lst

tab -d table

.SH EXIT CODE

0 if no error has occurred.

.SH FEATURE
A slightly annoyance: Although a sequence such as "^123456SpaceSpace"
gets converted to "^123456Tab"; If there's just a single space
before next spacing multiple of 8, as in eg a sequence "^1234567Space",
then Space is not converted to Tab, It might have been for some
reason to do with some ancient MesDos tool, or might simply be a
bug, I've long considered it a small annoyance to fix when I get
infinite free time ;-)

.SH HOST OP SYSTEM
This utility was first written by pjc+jhs in 1988 to run on Msdos
3.2, it's since been maintained to run on various Unixes (inc. Symmetrix 375,
& still ir regular used by jhs on FreeBSD-8.2-RELEASE in 2011.

.SH COPYRIGHT
Document Copyright Julian H. Stacey, Munich, September 1989,
.so author.jhs
.\ End of file