UNEXPAND(1)

📦
version 9.12 · 26 versions
, in arch rolling

🌸 NAME 🌸

okay so hi bestie, welcome to unexpand 💖 this little icon lives in the User Commands part of the manual (that's the (1) in unexpand(1), iykyk), and its whole entire personality is: convert spaces to tabs. that's it. that's the job. slay.

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

unexpand [OPTION]... [FILE]...

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So what it does is: it converts the blanks in each FILE into tabs, and writes the result to standard output. lowkey elegant, ngl.

If you give it no FILE at all, or if FILE is -, it reads from standard input. yes bestie, the classic - means stdin move 🫶

Also, mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too. that's just how it is, periodt.

Here's the whole menu of options, and you already know I'm not skipping a single one:

  • -a, --all — converts all the blanks, instead of just the initial ones. go big or go home energy 🔥
  • --first-only — converts only leading sequences of blanks (and yes, this overrides -a. it said "not today" 💅)
  • -t, --tabs=N — have tabs N characters apart instead of 8 (heads up: this enables -a)
  • -t, --tabs=LIST — use a comma separated list of tab positions. the last specified position can be prefixed with / to specify a tab size to use after the last explicitly specified tab stop. also a prefix of + can be used to align remaining tab stops relative to the last specified tab stop instead of the first column. very customizable, very main character ✨
  • --help — display this help and exit
  • --version — output version information and exit
ngl the two -t forms share the same flag but mean different things depending on what you hand them, so vibe check your arguments before you commit 😭

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Written by David MacKenzie. shoutout to David, actual legend, we love him 💜

🐛 REPORTING BUGS 🐛

Found something cursed? tell the people:

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.

read that again bestie: NO WARRANTY. to the extent permitted by law. it's giving "you're on your own but lovingly" 🙈

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

and that's the whole page, bestie 💖 this was GNU coreutils 9.12, dated September 2026, from the UNEXPAND(1) page — go forth and tab responsibly, mwah 🎀✨

📦 where this page comes from