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tabs – set terminal tabs

SYNOPSIS DESCRIPTION ENVIRONMENT EXIT STATUS SEE ALSO STANDARDS HISTORY BUGS

tabs [n | -a | -a2 | -c | -c2 | -c3 | -f | -p | -s | -u] [ +m[n]] [-T type]
tabs [-T type] [ +[n]] n1[,n2 ,...]

The tabs utility displays a series of characters that clear the hardware terminal tab settings then initialises tab stops at specified positions, and optionally adjusts the margin.

In the first synopsis form, the tab stops set depend on the command line options used, and may be one of the predefined formats or at regular intervals.

In the second synopsis form, tab stops are set at positions n1 , n2, etc. If a position is preceded by a ‘+’, it is relative to the previous position set. No more than 20 positions may be specified.

If no tab stops are specified, the "standard" Unix tab width of 8 is used.

The options are as follows:

n	Set a tab stop every n columns. If n is 0, the tab stops are cleared but no new ones are set.
-a
	Assembler format (columns 1, 10, 16, 36, 72).
-a2
	Assembler format (columns 1, 10, 16, 40, 72).
-c
	COBOL normal format (columns 1, 8, 12, 16, 20, 55)
-c2
	COBOL compact format (columns 1, 6, 10, 14, 49)
-c3
	COBOL compact format (columns 1, 6, 10, 14, 18, 22, 26, 30, 34, 38, 42, 46, 50, 54, 58, 62, 67).
-f
	FORTRAN format (columns 1, 7, 11, 15, 19, 23).
-p
	PL/1 format (columns 1, 5, 9, 13, 17, 21, 25, 29, 33, 37, 41, 45, 49, 53, 57, 61).
-s
	SNOBOL format (columns 1, 10, 55).
-u
	Assembler format (columns 1, 12, 20, 44).
+m[n], +[n] Set an n character left margin, or 10 if n is omitted.
-T type
	Output escape sequence for the terminal type type.

The utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

The tabs utility conforms to IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 ("POSIX.1").

A tabs utility appeared in PWB UNIX. This implementation was introduced in FreeBSD 5.0 .