NAME

tabs — set terminal tabs

SYNOPSIS

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

tabs	[-T type] [+[n]] n1[,n2,...]

DESCRIPTION

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

The phrase "tab-stop position N" means that, from the start of a line of output, tabbing to position N shall cause the next character output to be in the (N+1)th column on that line.

The following options are supported:

-n

Specifies repetitive tab stops separated by a uniform number of columns, n, where n is a single digit decimal number. The default usage of tabs with no arguments is equivalent to tabs -8. When -0 is used, the tab stops are cleared and no new ones set.

-a

Assembler, applicable to some mainframes. Equivalent to tabs 1,10,16,36,72 .

-a2

Assembler, applicable to some mainframes. Equivalent to tabs 1,10,16,40,72

-c

COBOL, normal format. Equivalent to tabs 1,8,12,16,20,55

-c2

COBOL, compact format (columns 1 to 6 omitted). Equivalent to tabs 1,6,10,14,49

-c3

COBOL, compact format (columns 1 to 6 omitted), with more tabs than -c2. Equivalent to tabs 1,6,10,14,18,22,26,30,34,38,42,46,50,54,58,62,67

-f

FORTRAN. Equivalent to tabs 1,7,11,15,19,23

-p

PL/1. Equivalent to tabs 1,5,9,13,17,21,25,29,33,37,41,45,49,53,57,61

-s

SNOBOL. Equivalent to tabs 1,10,55

-T type

Indicates the type of terminal.

-u

Assembler, applicable to some mainframes. Equivalent to tabs 1,12,20,44

EXIT STATUS

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

ENVIRONMENT

The COLUMNS and TERM environment variables affect the execution of tabs as described in environ(7).

The -T option overrides TERM. If neither TERM nor the -T option are present, tabs will fail.

SEE ALSO

expand(1), stty(1), tput(1), unexpand(1), termcap(5)

STANDARDS

The tabs utility conforms to IEEE Std 1003.1 (“POSIX.1”).

HISTORY

A tabs utility first appeared in PWB UNIX. This implementation was introduced in NetBSD 6.0.

AUTHORS

Roy Marples <roy@NetBSD.org>

BUGS

The current termcap(5) database does not define the set left soft margin ‘ML' capability for any terminals.