On Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 5:04 AM, Pádraig Brady <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 09/18/2012 03:18 PM, CoreUtils subscribtion for PLC wrote: > >> Hi >> >> This post is about a possible enhancement to the "expand" command >> included in coreutils. >> >> I oten use expand to format scripts output by manually setting tabs stop. >> The idea would be to add an option to "expand" to be able to auto-set >> tabstops by analyzing first <n> lines of test (0 for analyzing whole >> stream) so that the TS would be set to the minimum number of spaces to >> obtains clean columns. >> >> Best regards >> >> plc >> > > So for input with just leading tabs, they would be expanded to a single > space, > but in the presence of both leading tabs and spaces, the tab width would > be set to the minimum such that non blanks only start at a tab stop. > > Interesting idea, though not very useful I would expect, > since you'd probably have to specify a minimum with the --tabs option, > at which stage you don't have much advantage over just setting --tabs > directly. > > thanks, > Pádraig. > > This feature is already provided by a separate utility named column, dedicated to columnization, which is available under BSD license. What is not provided there is ability to analyze only first <n> lines. So unless it is about licensing, it may be better to enhance column instead of expand. If licensing is an issue then it may be better to add a utility dedicated to columnization to Coreutils, instead of enhancing expand. Thanks, Anoop
