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Re: How to expand tabs? Where is expand program.
- From: Warren Young <wyml at etr-usa dot com>
- To: The Cygwin Mailing List <cygwin at cygwin dot com>
- Date: Thu, 2 Jul 2015 18:46:22 -0600
- Subject: Re: How to expand tabs? Where is expand program.
- Authentication-results: sourceware.org; auth=none
- References: <701185250 dot 1353195 dot 1435878843444 dot JavaMail dot yahoo at mail dot yahoo dot com>
On Jul 2, 2015, at 5:14 PM, Richard Heintze <sieg_heintze@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> There used to be a very handy cygwin program called expand for expanding tabs into spaces.
expand(1) goes way, way back before Cygwin. Not as far back as V7 Unix. Maybe 4.3BSD?
> I tried searching the archives for it but there were too many hits for other topics ("expand" is a common word, apparently).
The proper way to search for such a thing is to put âexpand.exeâ into the Cygwin Package Search:
https://cygwin.com/cgi-bin2/package-grep.cgi?grep=expand.exe&arch=x86_64
It tells you itâs in coreutils.
Thatâs in Base, so if that didnât get installed, or expand.exe got removed afterward, your Cygwin installation may be broken. Iâd force a reinstall of coreutils, and maybe everything else in Base, too.
> Has it been taken away? I hope not!
It pretty much canât be taken away; itâs required by POSIX:
http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/expand.html
> How can I get a command line interface for expanding tabs into spaces that I can easily use from VI?
You donât have to, actually. Say :set expandtab. Now you donât need expand(1) at all. :)
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