EXPAND(1)

💖 EXPAND(1) 💖

okay so bestie, you know that one manual page called expand? It's from the User Commands corner of the man-page universe, and honestly it's giving ✨quiet luxury✨ — tiny, useful, no drama. Let's get into it 🎀

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🌸 NAME 🌸

expand — convert tabs to spaces. That's it. That's the whole job. And she does it flawlessly 💅

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

expand [OPTION]... [FILE]...

literally just toss some options and some files at her and she goes 🦋

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💜 DESCRIPTION 💜

She takes every tab inside each FILE and turns it into spaces, then writes the whole glow-up to standard output. No cap.

If you don't give her any FILE, or if FILE is -, she reads from standard input instead. She's flexible like that 🫶

Real talk: mandatory arguments for long options are also mandatory for the short ones. The = is not decorative, bestie, it's the rules 😭

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🎀 the options 🎀

• -i, --initial — do not convert tabs that come after non-blank characters. Leave those tabs alone, she said 💅
• -t, --tabs=N — make tabs N characters apart instead of the usual 8. Custom spacing, main character energy 👑
• -t, --tabs=LIST — now we're fancy: give her a comma separated list of tab positions. A few extra rules come with the vibes:
  • the last specified position can be prefixed with / — that sets a tab size to use after the last explicitly specified tab stop 🌸
  • a prefix of + can be used to align the remaining tab stops relative to the last specified tab stop instead of the first column 🧚
• --help — display this help and exit. She'll tell you everything she knows, and she knows a lot 💖
• --version — output version information and exit. Iconic queen behavior, showing her credentials ⭐

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🦋 AUTHOR 🦋

Written by David MacKenzie. Legend behavior, fr fr 🙌

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🌈 REPORTING BUGS 🌈

Found a bug? Not her fault, but tell the team anyway bestie:

• Report bugs to: <bug-coreutils@gnu.org>.
• Report any translation bugs to: <https://translationproject.org/team/>.
• GNU coreutils home page: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
• General help using GNU software: <https://www.gnu.org/gethelp/>

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💅 COPYRIGHT 💅

Copyright © 2026 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.

This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. (Say it with me: no warranty, no cap 😤)

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⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

• unexpand(1) — the reverse queen, she does the opposite 🌸
• Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/expand> or available locally via: info '(coreutils) expand invocation'

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and that's the whole page, bestie 🫶 this was GNU coreutils 9.12, dated September 2026, and yes she really is just a little tab-to-space machine with impeccable taste. go convert something, ily 💖✨🎀