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TABS(1) 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 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 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. 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), terminfo(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> NetBSD 10.99 April 5, 2012 NetBSD 10.99