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TABS(1)                                  BSD General Commands Manual                                 TABS(1)

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 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.

ENVIRONMENT
     The LANG, LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE and TERM environment variables affect the execution of tabs as described in
     environ(7).

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

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

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

STANDARDS
     The tabs utility conforms to IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 (``POSIX.1'').

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

BUGS
     The current termcap(5) database does not define the `ML' (set left soft margin) capability for any ter-minals. terminals.
     minals.

BSD                                             May 20, 2002                                             BSD