From: "Matthias Wächter" <matthias@...>
Date: 2012-04-28T19:09:13+09:00
Subject: Re: Global variable for spaces per tab?

Am 28.04.2012 05:37, schrieb Intransition:
>
>
> On Friday, April 27, 2012 5:01:37 PM UTC-4, Eric Christopherson wrote:
>
>     On Apr 27, 2012 3:29 PM, "Aaron Patterson" <tenderlove@ruby-lang.org
>     <mailto:tenderlove@ruby-lang.org>> wrote:
>      >
>      > On Sat, Apr 28, 2012 at 05:22:47AM +0900, Ryan Davis wrote:
>      > >
>      > > On Apr 27, 2012, at 11:51 , Intransition wrote:
>      > >
>      > > > Is there any global variable in Ruby for specifying how tabs
>     ("\t") should be translated into spaces?
>
>     Intransition: the amount of space shown by a tab is totally
>     dependent on the terminal used to display the text, and (unlike some
>     terminal parameters) there is no way for Ruby or any language to
>     change it. I guess the best thing you could do would be to implement
>     a writer stream that converted tabs to spaces.
>
>
> I guess I worded that poorly. I was just wondering if there is some
> setting to be read --not change. I'm not even sure ... is there such a
> setting in shell/bash?
>
> My use case is string unindention. Say I have a string with each line is
> prefixed with two "\t" characters and I want to unindent it by upto 2
> spaces. Then I need to translate the tabs to spaces. The unindent method
> can have an option for it, but I was wondering if there is some system
> setting I can look at for deciding a default.

Sure you’re not writing a Python parser, eh? ;)

– Matthias