MPE/iX Shell and Utilities Reference Manual, Vol 2

tabs(1) MPE/iX Shell and Utilities tabs(1)
NAME
tabs — set terminal tab stops
SYNOPSIS
tabs [+m[margin]] [–T term][– number]
tabs [+m[margin]] [–T term] –t tablist
tabs [+m[margin]] [–T term] num1[,num2,...]
tabs [+m[margin]] [–T term] tabspec
DESCRIPTION
tabs outputs a series of characters to the standard output, designed to clear the terminal hard-
ware’s tab stops and then set new ones. The characters that tabs outputs depends on your
type of terminal.
The first column of your terminal screen is column 1. If you set a tab stop at position N and
then tab to that position, the next character displayed on the screen appears in column N+1 of
the line (that is, after the tab stop).
tabs may not be able to set the tab stops on some types of terminals. In this case, it simply
issues an error message and exit with a status greater than zero. If you call tabs with no ar-
guments, it sets tab stops every 8 positions.
Options
tabs accepts the following options:
+m[margin]
sets the left margin to margin. margin defaults to 10 if you do not specify a value.
All tab positions are relative to the left margin. To find the actual tab positions, you
add the value of margin to each tab position.
–T type
indicates the type of terminal you have. The term argument is a site-specific name
for your terminal type.
If you do not specify –T, tabs looks for an environment variable named
TERM and
uses its value for type.If TERM is not defined, tabs assumes a default terminal type.
–t tablist
sets tab stops as specified by tablist. tablist consists of one or more positive decimal
integers, separated by commas; the numbers in the list should be in strictly increasing
order.
If only one number N is given, tabs are set every N columns. If more than one num-
ber is given, tabs are set at those column numbers.
1-584 Commands and Utilities