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phylae
Asked: 2011-06-08 13:05:56 +0800 CST

How to prevent GNU screen from expanding tabs into spaces?

  • 772

Using a normal bash prompt echo -e 'hello\tworld' produces a real tab. However the same command run within GNU screen puts spaces between the two words.

I have tested this on Ubuntu 10.04 with Screen version 4.00.03jw4 (FAU) 2-May-06 and RHEL 5.5 with Screen version 4.00.03 (FAU) 23-Oct-06

Is there a way to have screen output tab characters instead of converting them to spaces?

linux bash gnu-screen

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    No, there is no way, short of writing code. Have a look at the man page under "BUGS:"

    • Screen does not make use of hardware tabs.

    Hardware, in my case, is the software "gnome-terminal."

    • 1

  2. This simple experiment, inside GNU Screen, shows me that "\t" is outputting a TAB character (NOTE: You were missing an "-e" flag to your echo command):

    skx@birthday:~$ echo -e "Hello\tWorld" | od -c
0000000   H   e   l   l   o  \t   W   o   r   l   d  \n
0000014

    Now I repeat that command and save the output to a file, verifying that there is a TAB character still present:

    skx@birthday:~$ echo -e "Hello\tWorld" > x
skx@birthday:~$ od -c < x
0000000   H   e   l   l   o  \t   W   o   r   l   d  \n
0000014

    BUT if I cat that file, and copy and paste, via my mouse, into emacs the TAB is lost. So it seems like the parent gnome-terminal is doing something odd, or the tab is converted when pasted into my new window. Either way I suspect GNU Screen isn't to blame.

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