Test::Tabs(3pm)

✨ Test::Tabs ✨

okay bestie, so this is Test::Tabs (a Test:: module, iykyk) and its whole entire job is checking for tabs in your project. not even joking. it's giving "whitespace hall monitor" and honestly? she ate 💅

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

like, you can do the one-file vibe:

use Test::Tabs tests => 1;
tabs_ok('lib/Module.pm', 'Module is indented sanely');

orrrr:

use Test::Tabs;
all_perl_files_ok();

orrrr if you're feeling extra and wanna point at your own dirs:

use Test::Tabs;
all_perl_files_ok( @mydirs );

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so what this module does is it goes through your whole project/distribution and scans every perl file it can find (scripts, modules, etc, all of them) looking for tabs. she's thorough, no cap.

specifically, here's the vibe check it runs 👇

• all indentation has to be done with tabs, never spaces
• alignment has to be done with spaces, never tabs
• indentation levels can never jump up — like, going from 1 tab indent straight to 3 tab indent without an intervening 2 tab indent? absolutely not, that's a red flag 🚩
• no trailing whitespace on any line (though a line is allowed to be entirely whitespace, that's fine, we're not monsters)

Comment lines and pod? ignored. completely. not our problem. (tho the docs do say a future version may also ignore heredocs — so maybe one day, bestie, maybe one day 🙈)

now, the escape hatches, and there's three of them so listen up:

• a trailing comment ##WS lets you ignore all the whitespace rules for that one line 💖
• ## no Test::Tabs starts ignoring the whitespace rules for all the following lines, and keeps doing that until it sees ## use Test::Tabs
• ## skip Test::Tabs tells Test::Tabs to skip the current file entirely — but there's a catch, it has to be used before the first whitespace rule violation, otherwise it's too late and she's already clocked you 💀

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🎀 Functions 🎀

• all_perl_files_ok( @directories ) — runs tabs_ok() on literally every perl file it finds in @directories, recursively, down the whole tree. if you don't pass any @directories at all, the starting point defaults to one level above the current running script, which should cover all the files of a typical CPAN distribution. and what counts as a perl file, you ask? a *.pl, a *.pm, a *.psgi, a *.t, or any file whose first line starts with "#!...perl". that's the whole list, periodt.
• tabs_ok( $file, $text ) — runs a tab check on $file. here's the cute part: for a module you can pass in either the path (lib/My/Module.pm) or the package name (My::Module), your choice, both work 🫶. $text is the optional test name, if you wanna be descriptive about it.

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🦋 BUGS 🦋

found a bug? please report it, bestie, don't just sit on it:

<http://rt.cpan.org/Dist/Display.html?Queue=Test-Tabs>

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⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

Test::EOL, Test::More.

go read those too, they're in the same friend group 👑

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💜 AUTHOR 💜

Toby Inkster <tobyink@cpan.org>.

and huge shoutout: large portions stolen from Test::NoTabs by Nick Gerakines. iconic behavior, we respect it 🙌

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🌈 COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE 🌈

This software is copyright (c) 2012-2013 by Toby Inkster.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.

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💅 DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES 💅

THIS PACKAGE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

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and that's the whole page, bestie!! this one's from perl v5.40.1, dated 2025-08-14 — go forth and check those tabs, ily, mwah 💖✨