.\"
.\" Copyright (c) 2003 Gunnar Ritter
.\"
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.\" warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages
.\" arising from the use of this software.
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.\" including commercial applications, and to alter it and redistribute
.\" it freely, subject to the following restrictions:
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.\" 1. The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not
.\"    claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this software
.\"    in a product, an acknowledgment in the product documentation would be
.\"    appreciated but is not required.
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.\" 2. Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be
.\"    misrepresented as being the original software.
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.\" 3. This notice may not be removed or altered from any source distribution.
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.\" Sccsid @(#)unexpand.1	1.3 (gritter) 12/6/04
.TH UNEXPAND 1 "12/6/04" "Heirloom Toolchest" "User Commands"
.SH NAME
unexpand \- convert spaces to tabs
.SH SYNOPSIS
\fBunexpand\fR [\fB\-a\fR]
[\fB\-t\ \fItablist\fR | \fB\-\fItablist\fR] [\fIfile\fR\ ...]
.SH DESCRIPTION
The
.I unexpand
utility converts multiple space characters found
at the beginning of each line
of its input
.I files
(or of standard input if no
.I file
argument is present)
to tabulators if appropriate
and writes the result to standard output.
The input is ordered in columns
according to the width of characters;
a backspace character causes the column to be decremented.
By default, a tabulator stop is assumed at every eight positions.
.PP
The following options alter the behavior of
.IR unexpand :
.TP
.B \-a
Causes conversion also to apply
to sequences of two or more spaces
found after the first character on each line other than a space.
.TP
.B \fB\-t\ \fItablist\fR
Specify the positions of tabulator stops.
If
.I tablist
is a single number,
a tabulator stop is assumed at every
.I tablist positions.
If
.I tablist
is a list of numbers
in strictly ascending order
separated by commas or blanks,
a tabulator stop is assumed at each numbered position.
For column positions beyond the last tabulator stop,
each tabulator character is converted to a single space character.
Implies
.IR \-a .
This option was introduced by POSIX.2.
.SH "ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES"
.TP
.BR LANG ", " LC_ALL
See
.IR locale (7).
.TP
.B LC_CTYPE
Specifies the mapping of bytes to characters
and the width of characters.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
expand(1),
tabs(1)