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TABS(1P)		   POSIX Programmer's Manual		      TABS(1P)

PROLOG
       This  manual  page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual.  The Linux
       implementation of this interface may differ (consult the	 corresponding
       Linux  manual page for details of Linux behavior), or the interface may
       not be implemented on Linux.

NAME
       tabs — set terminal tabs

SYNOPSIS
       tabs [−n|−a|−a2|−c|−c2|−c3|−f|−p|−s|−u] [−T type]

       tabs [−T type] n[[sep[+]n]...]

DESCRIPTION
       The tabs utility shall display 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'' shall be taken to  mean  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  position  on  that
       line. The maximum number of tab stops allowed is terminal-dependent.

       It  need not be possible to implement tabs on certain terminals. If the
       terminal type obtained from the TERM environment variable or −T	option
       represents  such a terminal, an appropriate diagnostic message shall be
       written to standard error and tabs shall exit  with  a  status  greater
       than zero.

OPTIONS
       The  tabs  utility  shall  conform  to  the  Base Definitions volume of
       POSIX.1‐2008, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines, except for vari‐
       ous extensions: the options −a2, −c2, and −c3 are multi-character.

       The following options shall be supported:

       −n	 Specify repetitive tab stops separated by a uniform number of
		 column positions, n, where n is a single-digit	 decimal  num‐
		 ber.  The  default  usage  of tabs with no arguments shall be
		 equivalent to tabs −8. When −0 is used, the tab  stops	 shall
		 be cleared and no new ones set.

       −a	 1,10,16,36,72
		 Assembler, applicable to some mainframes.

       −a2	 1,10,16,40,72
		 Assembler, applicable to some mainframes.

       −c	 1,8,12,16,20,55
		 COBOL, normal format.

       −c2	 1,6,10,14,49
		 COBOL, compact format (columns 1 to 6 omitted).

       −c3	 1,6,10,14,18,22,26,30,34,38,42,46,50,54,58,62,67
		 COBOL compact format (columns 1 to 6 omitted), with more tabs
		 than −c2.

       −f	 1,7,11,15,19,23
		 FORTRAN

       −p	 1,5,9,13,17,21,25,29,33,37,41,45,49,53,57,61
		 PL/1

       −s	 1,10,55
		 SNOBOL

       −u	 1,12,20,44
		 Assembler, applicable to some mainframes.

       −T type	 Indicate the type of terminal. If this option is not supplied
		 and  the  TERM	 variable  is  unset  or  null, an unspecified
		 default terminal type shall be	 used.	The  setting  of  type
		 shall take precedence over the value in TERM.

OPERANDS
       The following operand shall be supported:

       n[[sep[+]n]...]
		 A  single  command line argument that consists of one or more
		 tab-stop values (n) separated by a separator character	 (sep)
		 which	is either a <comma> or a <blank> character. The appli‐
		 cation shall ensure that the  tab-stop	 values	 are  positive
		 decimal integers in strictly ascending order. If any tab-stop
		 value (except the first one) is preceded by a <plus-sign>, it
		 is  taken  as an increment to be added to the previous value.
		 For example, the tab lists  1,10,20,30	 and  "110+10+10"  are
		 considered to be identical.

STDIN
       Not used.

INPUT FILES
       None.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
       The following environment variables shall affect the execution of tabs:

       LANG	 Provide  a  default  value for the internationalization vari‐
		 ables that are unset or null. (See the Base Definitions  vol‐
		 ume  of POSIX.1‐2008, Section 8.2, Internationalization Vari‐
		 ables for the precedence  of  internationalization  variables
		 used to determine the values of locale categories.)

       LC_ALL	 If  set  to  a non-empty string value, override the values of
		 all the other internationalization variables.

       LC_CTYPE	 Determine the locale for the interpretation of	 sequences  of
		 bytes of text data as characters (for example, single-byte as
		 opposed to multi-byte characters in arguments).

       LC_MESSAGES
		 Determine the locale that should be used to affect the format
		 and  contents	of  diagnostic	messages  written  to standard
		 error.

       NLSPATH	 Determine the location of message catalogs for the processing
		 of LC_MESSAGES.

       TERM	 Determine  the	 terminal  type.  If this variable is unset or
		 null, and if the −T option is not specified,  an  unspecified
		 default terminal type shall be used.

ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS
       Default.

STDOUT
       If standard output is a terminal, the appropriate sequence to clear and
       set the tab stops may be written to standard output in  an  unspecified
       format. If standard output is not a terminal, undefined results occur.

STDERR
       The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.

OUTPUT FILES
       None.

EXTENDED DESCRIPTION
       None.

EXIT STATUS
       The following exit values shall be returned:

	0    Successful completion.

       >0    An error occurred.

CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS
       Default.

       The following sections are informative.

APPLICATION USAGE
       This  utility  makes  use  of the terminal's hardware tabs and the stty
       tabs option.

       This utility is not recommended for application use.

       Some integrated display units might not have escape  sequences  to  set
       tab stops, but may be set by internal system calls. On these terminals,
       tabs works if standard output is directed to the terminal; if output is
       directed to another file, however, tabs fails.

EXAMPLES
       None.

RATIONALE
       Consideration  was  given  to having the tput utility handle all of the
       functions described in tabs.  However, the separate  tabs  utility  was
       retained	 because  it  seems more intuitive to use a command named tabs
       than tput with a new option. The tput utility does not support  setting
       or  clearing tabs, and no known historical version of tabs supports the
       capability of setting arbitrary tab stops.

       The System V tabs interface is very complex; the version in this volume
       of  POSIX.1‐2008	 has  a reduced feature list, but many of the features
       omitted were restored as part of the XSI option even  though  the  sup‐
       ported languages and coding styles are primarily historical.

       There  was considerable sentiment for specifying only a means of reset‐
       ting the tabs back to a known state—presumably the ``standard'' of tabs
       every eight positions. The following features were omitted:

	*  Setting  tab	 stops	via  the  first	 line in a file, using −−file.
	   Since even the SVID has no complete explanation of this feature, it
	   is doubtful that it is in widespread use.

       In  an  early  proposal,	 a −t tablist option was added for consistency
       with expand; this was later removed when inconsistencies with the  his‐
       torical list of tabs were identified.

       Consideration  was  given  to  adding a −p option that would output the
       current tab settings so	that  they  could  be  saved  and  then	 later
       restored.  This	was not accepted because querying the tab stops of the
       terminal is not a capability in historical terminfo or termcap  facili‐
       ties and might not be supported on a wide range of terminals.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS
       None.

SEE ALSO
       expand, stty, tput, unexpand

       The  Base  Definitions  volume  of POSIX.1‐2008, Chapter 8, Environment
       Variables, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines

COPYRIGHT
       Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in  electronic  form
       from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2013 Edition, Standard for Information Technology
       -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX),	The  Open  Group  Base
       Specifications Issue 7, Copyright (C) 2013 by the Institute of Electri‐
       cal and Electronics Engineers,  Inc  and	 The  Open  Group.   (This  is
       POSIX.1-2008  with  the	2013  Technical Corrigendum 1 applied.) In the
       event of any discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and
       The  Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard
       is the referee document. The original Standard can be  obtained	online
       at http://www.unix.org/online.html .

       Any  typographical  or  formatting  errors that appear in this page are
       most likely to have been introduced during the conversion of the source
       files  to  man page format. To report such errors, see https://www.ker‐
       nel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .

IEEE/The Open Group		     2013			      TABS(1P)
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