Re: Replace multiple tabs with spaces at start of a string

Why can't you replace the tabs directly?

s/^(\t+)/' ' x (4 * length $1)/e;
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The number of spaces will be four times the number of tabs.

Or, without /e :

$s =~ s/(^|\G)\t/    /g;
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Replace a tab with 4 spaces if it's at the start of the string or after a previously replaced tab.

Update: The latter could be simplified to

$s =~ s/\G\t/    /g;
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as the "last match" is initially set to the beginning of the string.

($q=q:Sq=~/;[c](.)(.)/;chr(-||-|5+lengthSq)`"S|oS2"`map{chr |+ord
}map{substrSq`S_+|`|}3E|-|`7**2-3:)=~y+S|`+$1,++print+eval$q,q,a,
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Re^2: Replace multiple tabs with spaces at start of a string by Eily (Monsignor) on May 17, 2017 at 13:10 UTC
++ With the /m modifier, the first solution also works on multiline input: `print $_ and print s/(^\|\G)\t/____/mgr for "\tHello\t\n\t\tWorld\t!\n\t!\n";`	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Replace multiple tabs with spaces at start of a string by mavericknik (Sexton) on May 17, 2017 at 07:11 UTC
Thank you very much! I was not aware of \G in perl, I will look into it.	[reply]
Re^2: Replace multiple tabs with spaces at start of a string by Anonymous Monk on May 17, 2017 at 20:15 UTC
what is the meaning of the \G there??	[reply]
Re^3: Replace multiple tabs with spaces at start of a string by KurtZ (Friar) on May 17, 2017 at 20:22 UTC
Anchor where to start for next match. The \G anchor matches at the point where the previous//g match left off. \G allows us to easily do context-sensitive matching... perlretut	[reply]