You'll need to have a wide terminal to see the effect I am seeing.

Mine is set to 1000 chars wide with tab stops the typical every 8 characters, but when I execute the following code, columns 13, 14 & 15 (char offset 98+) are displayed as if the tab stops at the first of those three positions was every 4 chars. Is this Perl's doing or a peculiarity of my terminal? 

print join ' ', ('123456789') x 20; 
print join "\t", ('xx') x 50;;

123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 
xx      xx      xx      xx      xx      xx      xx      xx      xx   

123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789 123456789
   xx      xx      xx      xx  xx  xx      xx      xx      xx

...........................^...^...^

[download]

Perhaps even weirder, the pattern of 3 grouping occurs recurrently at intervals across the screen, but the intervals are not regular. Then next occurance is at 39, 40 & 41 (char offset 297+). The one after at 65, 66 & 67 (497+).

I keep looking for a pattern in either the tab stop numbers or char offset numbers, but if there is one, it's eluding me?

Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
"Too many [] have been sedated by an oppressive environment of political correctness and risk aversion."

In reply to Perl or my terminal? by BrowserUk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.