Subject: bug#25553: How many coreutils rely on tabs to align things (other, than 'du'?

From: Paul Eggert <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2017 02:41:24 -0800

L A Walsh wrote:
> I'm working on some loose ends, but basically,
> First, it would default to providing no change.  ;-)
>
> Through use of a switch it can expand the tabs to spaces
> using a default of every 8th column (after 1) (using a
> switch value of 'ExpandTo').
>
> And with 2 env vars, TTY_TABSIZE & TTY_TABSET
> it can re-entabulate the output to use the user's tabsize as related through the
> env vars.

It sounds like this could be done via 'du | expand', so why change 'du'?

Also, environment variables cause too many problems. If new functionality is 
needed here (which is not yet clear), it should be via new options.