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Expand And Unexpand Commands Tutorial With Examples
This guide explains two Linux commands namely Expand and Unexpand with practical examples. For those wondering, the Expand and Unexpand commands are used to replace TAB characters in files with SPACE characters and vice versa. There is also a command called “Expand” in MS-DOS, which is used to expand a compressed file. But the Linux Expand command simply converts the tabs to spaces. These two commands are part of GNU coreutils and written by David MacKenzie.
For the demonstration purpose, I will be using a text file named “ostechnix.txt” throughout this guide. All commands given below are tested in Arch Linux.
Expand command examples
Like I already mentioned, the Expand command replaces TAB characters in a file with SPACE characters.
Now, let us convert tabs to spaces in the ostechnix.txt file and write the result to standard output using command:
$ expand ostechnix.txt
If you don’t want to display the result in standard output, just upload it to another file like below.
$ expand ostechnix.txt>output.txt
We can also convert tabs to spaces, reading from standard input. To do so, just run “expand” command without mentioning the source file name:
$ expand
Just type the text and hit ENTER to convert tabs to spaces. Press CTRL+C to quit.
If you do not want to convert tabs after non blanks, use -i flag like below.
$ expand -i ostechnix.txt
We can also have tabs a certain number of characters apart, not 8 (the default value):
$ expand -t=5 ostechnix.txt
You can even mention multiple tab positions with comma separated like below.
$ expand -t 5,10,15 ostechnix.txt
Or,
$ expand -t "5 10 15" ostechnix.txt
For more details, refer man pages.
$ man expand
Unexpand Command Examples
As you may have already guessed, the Unexpand command will do the opposite of the Expand command. I.e It will convert SPACE charatcers to TAB characters. Let me show you a few examples to learn how to use Unexpand command.
To convert blanks (spaces, of course) in a file to tabs and write the output to stdout, do:
$ unexpand ostechnix.txt
If you want to write the output in a file instead of just displaying it to stdout, use this command:
$ unexpand ostechnix.txt>output.txt
Convert blanks to tabs, reading from standard output:
$ unexpand
By default, Unexpand command will only convert the initial blanks. If you want to convert all blanks, instead of just initial blanks, use -a flag:
$ unexpand -a ostechnix.txt
To convert only leading sequences of blanks (Please note that it overrides -a ):
$ unexpand --first-only ostechnix.txt
Have tabs a certain number of characters apart, not 8 (enables -a ):
$ unexpand -t 5 ostechnix.txt
Similarly, we can mention multiple tab positions with comma separated like below.
$ unexpand -t 5,10,15 ostechnix.txt
Or,
$ unexpand -t "5 10 15" ostechnix.txt
For more details, refer man pages.
$ man unexpand
Suggested read:
When you working on large number of files, the Expand and Unexpand commands could be very helpful to replace unwanted TAB characters with SPACE characters and vice versa.
via: https://www.ostechnix.com/expand-and-unexpand-commands-tutorial-with-examples/