unexpand(1) — Linux manual page

UNEXPAND(1)                   User Commands                   UNEXPAND(1)

NAME         top

       unexpand - convert spaces to tabs

SYNOPSIS         top

       unexpand [OPTION]... [FILE]...

DESCRIPTION         top

       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.  The last
              specified position can be prefixed with '/' to specify a
              tab size to use after the last explicitly specified tab
              stop.  Also a prefix of '+' can be used to align remaining
              tab stops relative to the last specified tab stop instead
              of the first column

       --help display this help and exit

       --version
              output version information and exit

AUTHOR         top

       Written by David MacKenzie.

REPORTING BUGS         top

       GNU coreutils online help:
       <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
       Report any translation bugs to
       <https://translationproject.org/team/>

COPYRIGHT         top

       Copyright © 2025 Free Software Foundation, Inc.  License GPLv3+:
       GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
       This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
       There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

SEE ALSO         top

       expand(1)

       Full documentation
       <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/unexpand>
       or available locally via: info '(coreutils) unexpand invocation'

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the coreutils (basic file, shell and text
       manipulation utilities) project.  Information about the project
       can be found at ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/⟩.  If you
       have a bug report for this manual page, see
       ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/⟩.  This page was obtained
       from the tarball coreutils-9.7.tar.xz fetched from
       ⟨http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/⟩ on 2025-08-11.  If you
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       in this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original manual page),
       send a mail to man-pages@man7.org

GNU coreutils 9.7               April 2025                    UNEXPAND(1)

Pages that refer to this page: expand(1)

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