Replace whitespaces with tabs in linux

Question

How do I replace whitespaces with tabs in linux in a given text file

User · Answer

Use the unexpand 1  program    UNEXPAND 1                       User Commands                     UNEXPAND 1   NAME        unexpand - convert spaces to tabs  SYNOPSIS        unexpand  OPTION      FILE      DESCRIPTION        Convert  blanks in each FILE to tabs  writing to standard output   With        no FILE  or when FILE is -  read standard input          Mandatory arguments to long options are  mandatory  for  short  options        too          -a  --all               convert all blanks  instead of just initial blanks         --first-only               convert only leading sequences of blanks  overrides -a          -t  --tabs N               have tabs N characters apart instead of 8  enables -a          -t  --tabs LIST               use comma separated LIST of tab positions  enables -a          --help display this help and exit         --version               output version information and exit       STANDARDS        The expand and unexpand utilities conform to IEEE Std 1003 1-2001           POSIX 1

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Download and run the following script to recursively convert soft tabs to hard tabs in plain text files   Place and execute the script from inside the folder which contains the plain text files      bin bash  find   -type f -and -not -path     git    -exec grep -Iq         -and -print   while read -r file  do       echo  Converting      file        data   unexpand --first-only -t 4   file        rm   file       echo   data   gt    file      done

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You can also use astyle  I found it quite useful and it has several options too   Tab and Bracket Options     If  no  indentation  option is set  the default option of 4 spaces will be used  Equivalent to -s4 --indent spaces 4   If no brackets option is set  the    brackets will not be changed      --indent spaces  --indent spaces    -s  -s            Indent using   spaces per indent  Between 1 to 20   Not specifying   will result in a default of 4 spaces per indent      --indent tab  --indent tab    -t  -t            Indent using tab characters  assuming that each tab is   spaces long   Between 1 and 20  Not specifying   will result in a default assumption  of           4 spaces per tab

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Using sed   T   printf   t   sed  s    blank       T g    or  sed  s    space       T g

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If you are talking about replacing all consecutive spaces on a line with a tab then tr -s    blank      t     root sysresccd  run archiso img dev   sfdisk -l -q -o Device Start  dev sda Device         Start  dev sda1       2048  dev sda2     411648  dev sda3    2508800  dev sda4   10639360  dev sda5   75307008  dev sda6   96278528  dev sda7  115809778  root sysresccd  run archiso img dev   sfdisk -l -q -o Device Start  dev sda   tr -s    blank      t  Device  Start  dev sda1       2048  dev sda2       411648  dev sda3       2508800  dev sda4       10639360  dev sda5       75307008  dev sda6       96278528  dev sda7       115809778   If you are talking about replacing all whitespace  e g  space  tab  newline  etc   then tr -s    space       root sysresccd  run archiso img dev   sfdisk -l -q -o Device Start  dev sda   tr -s    space      t  Device  Start    dev sda1       2048     dev sda2       411648   dev sda3       2508800  dev sda4       10639360         dev sda5       75307008         dev sda6     96278528         dev sda7       115809778     If you are talking about fixing a tab-damaged file then use expand and unexpand as mentioned in other answers

User · Answer

Using Perl   perl -p -i -e  s    t g  file txt

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This will replace consecutive spaces with one space  but not tab    tr -s    blank      This will replace consecutive spaces with a tab   tr -s    blank      t

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Example command for converting each  js file under the current dir to tabs  only leading spaces are converted    find   -name    js  -exec bash -c  unexpand -t 4 --first-only   0   gt   tmp totabbuff  amp  amp  mv  tmp totabbuff   0

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better tr command   tr   blank     t   This will clean up the output of say  unzip -l   for further processing with grep  cut  etc   e g    unzip -l some-jars-and-textfiles zip   tr   blank     t   cut -f 5   grep jar

User · Answer

I think you can try with awk  awk -v OFS   t    1  1  file1   or SED if you preffer  sed  s   blank      g  thefile txt  gt  the modified copy txt   or even tr  tr -s   t   lt  thefile txt   tr   t       gt  the modified copy txt   or a simplified version of the tr solution sugested by Sam Bisbee   tr       t  lt  someFile  gt  someFile

[linux] Replace whitespaces with tabs in linux

Use the unexpand(1) program

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