Replace tabs with spaces

**Charted** · 12-20-2014

Hey,

i want to replace tabs with spaces but i didn't get it.
I also tried to count all the chars that i read from a file but that does also not work.

Here's what i have so far (fP is just a file)

Code:

void ReplaceTab(FILE *fP)
{
    int char_ = 0;
   
    if (fP != NULL)
    {
        while((char_ = fgetc(fP)) != EOF)
        {
            if(char_ == '\\') 
            {
                char_ = fgetc(fP);
               
                if(char_ == 't') // 
                {
                    // Here's where i stuck. I just want to do it with c, no c++
                    printf("\t");
                }
                else
                {
                    putchar(92); // == \
                    putchar(char_);
                }
            }
            else
            {
                putchar(char_); // To print the chars
            }
        }
    }
    else
        printf("The file does not exists!");
        exit(1);
}

**bithub** · 12-20-2014

You are not replacing tabs with spaces. You are replacing "\\t" with "\t". In other words, you are replacing a backslash followed by the letter 't' with a tab. Also (if you're unaware), you are actually just printing the replacements to the console. The file is not modified at all.

If you wanted to replace tabs with spaces, you would need something like this:

Code:

if (char_ == '\t') putchar(' ');

Of course the number of spaces per tab would depend on what you want your tab width to be.

**Charted** · 12-20-2014

I know but i just wrote it to let you know where i stuck.
The normal tab width is 8 as far as i know and i want to keep it like that.

I have some \t in my file and i want to replace them, that's what i WANT to do.

But yeah ... how can i convert the tab to as many spaces as needed? Sometimes there are just 2 spaces needed and sometimes there are 6.?

**bithub** · 12-20-2014

But yeah ... how can i convert the tab to as many spaces as needed? Sometimes there are just 2 spaces needed and sometimes there are 6.?

This is not a trivial problem for a beginner. You need to keep track of how many characters you are printing and only add spaces up to your tabstop column.

Here is an example of what I'm talking about:

Code:

const int tabwidth = 8;
int column = 0;
...
while(...)
{
    if (c == '\t')
    {
        int spaces_needed = tabwidth - column % tabwidth;
        column += spaces_needed;
    }

I will leave it as an exercise for you to figure out when to increment the column value and how to handle newline characters. Also, if you want this to work with a non ASCII encoding (like UTF-8), then good luck

**FloridaJo** · 12-20-2014

That's detab from K&R Chapter 1.
This is what I came up with:

Code:

#include <stdio.h>
#define TABS 4
#define MAXLINE 100




int main(int argc, const char * argv[])
{


    char newline[MAXLINE], c;
    int i;
    int cnt = 0;
    
    printf("Give me a line sucker!\n");
    
    while ((c = getchar()) != '\n') {
        if (c == '\t') {
            do{
                newline[cnt] = ' ';
                ++cnt;
            }while (cnt % TABS);  //find the Tab spot by modulus. Clean                                       
                                   //division (no remainder) defines a Tab spot.
        
        }
        else {
            newline[cnt] = c;
            ++cnt;
        }
    }
    
    for (i = 0; i < cnt; i++) {
        printf("%c",newline[i]);
    }
    printf("\n");
    
    
    return 0;
}

**grumpy** · 12-20-2014

Originally Posted by bithub

This is not a trivial problem for a beginner. You need to keep track of how many characters you are printing and only add spaces up to your tabstop column.

I agree, it's not for rank beginners, but it's not exactly an advanced problem either except in some special cases.

When outputting a character, all that is necessary is to track the displacement from the beginning of the line. When a tab is encountered, work out the separation between the next character and the next tab stop, and output that number of spaces.

Where it can be entertaining is that tab stops themselves are variable - some editors specify different intervals 2,3,4,5,6,8 etc, some editors allow the user to specify all tab stops, but information about the tab stops is not typically written to the actual file (instead being stored in some configuration file for the editor itself). That means the set of tab stops needs to be a program input (e.g. from a config file, command line options, and some sensible defaults if no such input is supplied).

It would be necessary to specify the behaviour required for any character input/encoding. What should happen if unprintable characters are encountered? How about handling vertical tabs? For a somewhat advanced topic, what about localisation (e.g. handling files for non-english speakers)?

Thread: Replace tabs with spaces

Thread Tools

Search Thread

Display

Replace tabs with spaces

Similar Threads

replacing tabs with spaces

How do you indent: spaces or tabs?

Changing 3 spaces to tabs

Tabs or Spaces

tabs to spaces with dev c++ v.4