Expand tabs

Introduction

VVV package provides command vvv-expand-tabs command to batch convert text files to use spaces (soft tabs) instead of hard tabs. It provides in-place replacement, so it can be easily used against source trees.

Usage

Use with find UNIX command.

Active VVV virtualenv first:

. ~/vvv-venv/bin/activate

With find and xargs you can easily convert the whole project tree away from hard tabs. Use --tabsize command line argument to tell what kind of hard tab size the source files where using:

# Find all ascii files and convert them to use tabs,
# but watch out not to hit Makefile or any other file needing hard tabs!
find . -name "*" -type f -print | xargs file | grep ASCII | cut -d: -f1 | xargs vvv-expand-tabs --inplace --tabsize=4

Note

Since the modification is done in-place back-up your files first.

You can also try UNIX expand command, but it does not supports in-place conversion.