GNU bug report logs - #25553
How many coreutils rely on tabs to align things (other, than 'du'?

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Message #11 received at 25553 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: L A Walsh <coreutils <at> tlinx.org>
To: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>
Cc: 25553 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: Re: bug#25553: How many coreutils rely on tabs to align things (other, 
 than 'du'?
Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2017 18:33:57 -0800

Paul Eggert wrote:
> L A Walsh wrote:
>> Are there other utils that rely on tabs to align
>> output as much as 'du'?
> 
> Sure. 'ls', 'fmt', 'cut', 'cat', 'pr',....
> 
>> What would be objections to fixing 'du' or others
>> that rely on such?
> 
> It would depend on the proposed change.
----
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.

The env vars cause no change in program behavior unless
the switch specifies 'AlignTo'.

I developed the 'tabout' feature in a 'tabout.c+h' file
and added it to 'du' -- but noted it was not the best way
to test, so wrote a driver-program, 'retab', to allow focus
testing on the retabbing code that does the retabbing on
files or stdin and sends the result to stdout.

...that's a rough description...

Will let you know as I finish off some loose ends and code
refactoring/tidying...

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