Text::Tabs will do the same as my example, it will replace the tabs with a fixed amount of spaces but it will not consider the spaces in between the two strings.

i disagree. from the description in the Text::Tabs pod:

Text::Tabs does about what the unix utilities expand(1) and unexpand(1) do. Given a line with tabs in it, expand will replace the tabs with the appropriate number of spaces. Given a line with or without tabs in it, unexpand will add tabs when it can save bytes by doing so. Invisible compression with plain ascii!

here's an example:

#!/usr/bin/perl
require 5.006_001;
use strict;
use warnings;
$|++;

use Text::Tabs;
my $tabstop = 8;

my $text = "12345678901234567890\n\thi\tbye";
print $text,$/,length $text,$/;
my $newtext = expand($text)
print $newtext, $/,length $newtext,$/;
__END__
## prints
12345678901234567890
        hi      bye
28
12345678901234567890
        hi      bye
40

[download]

...unless i'm missing something

~Particle *accelerates*

In reply to Re^3: How to replace Tab with spaces not altering postion by particle
in thread How to replace Tab with spaces not altering postion by juo

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