> Am 26.01.2017 um 12:04 schrieb Pádraig Brady : > > On 26/01/17 10:26, Reuti wrote: >> >>> Am 26.01.2017 um 05:29 schrieb L A Walsh : >>> >>> >>> In programs that take tabstops, as an alternative to a tabsize, I've always >>> seen tabs beyond the end of the list taken as equal to the highest tab-stop >>> difference. So for a tabsize=8, a tabset of 1,9 would be equivalent -- with >>> tabs above "9" being "9-1" or every 8th column above 9. >>> >>> Otherwise you have no way of expression all tabs on a line that stretches out to >>> "???" 160? 240? what? other than to enumerate tabstops to infinity. >>> >>> If they want to limit tabstops above the last to size "1", they can use something like 1,9,10. How else can one specify tabs beyond the last >>> for a size other than "1"? >>> >>> Could this be changed/fixed? >> >> For now the behavior is like specified on the info page: "[…] and replace any tabs beyond the last tab stop given with single spaces." To avoid that this gets broken, I would suggest to use a modified syntax like 1,9,30,34,/4 for using a width of 4 beyond 34. >> > > I like that. Explicit and extensible. > An alternative could be: --tabs=1,9,30,34,+4 ? Sure, this works too. In fact: I had this also in mind first, but with the extension to specify a multiplicator for the width I found "2+4" misleading and a slash more appropriate. -- Reuti > >> This could even be expanded to: -t 2/4,120,4/5,/9 >> >> Two times a width of 4, a fixed 120, four times a width of 5 and all remaining have a width of 9 (could also be */9 instead of /9). > > That might be overkill. > It wouldn't provide extra functionality, only a shortcut, > and a very rarely used one at that. > >> While we are on this: >> >> expand -t 5,15,25,35 file >> expand -t 5,15,25,,,,35 file >> >> are AFAICS both the same. I would expect the second to behave different (using a space for the three tabs which have no value). > > I'm not sure we should assume empty = 1. > Note FreeBSD rejects this format: > > $ seq 8 | paste -s -d$'\t' - | expand -t1,,2 > expand: bad tab stop spec > > One might consider and empty value after a comma to mean take the previous tab stop width, > and that would be a partially backwards compat way to provide the original request, i.e.: > > expand -t 1,9,, > > However that seems a bit hacky and non obvious. > > thanks, > Pádraig