Hi all,
I have a problem with a text file which I am trying to strip all the tabs out of, and replace with their equivalent space (I know I could probably do this outside of Perl but I'm sure that there must be a way to do it and I not gonna give up till I find it.) The file looks like this : 

{some random text} 9.99    9.999   9.999  9.999   9.9999   9.9999 
{more text}        9.99    *9.999  *9.999 9.999   9.9999   9.9999 
{even more text}   9.99    9.999   9.999  *9.999  *9.9999  *9.9999 

..this goes on for 12 or so columns..

[download]
Basically the first two columns, the text and three sig-fig number are fixed, but the following columns sometimes have a *preceding them, and sometimes don't.
All the table is at present tab-delimited.
<nbsp> So, the problem is, how do I strip out the '\t's?
If it weren't for the '*' I could simply use a "s/\t/ \1/g" or something of that nature. But having the *s means in where there is a *, I need one less space than where there isn't one.
So, I tried this: 
perl -1 "while (<>) s/\t(\*w+)/      \1/g;s/\t\s(w+)/    \1/g;print}" 
+myfile

[download]
Which did - <bold> absolutely nothing </bold>. The tabs are all still there.
I know I'm probably being a complete retard, but is there an obvious way to do this that I've missed out on?

Thanks,
Mike

In reply to Conditionally converting tabs to spaces by Anonymous Monk

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