On 19.06.2007 02:53, Just Another Victim of the Ambient Morality wrote:
>     I have some funky Python code that I'm trying to modify but it's 
> formatted with spaces instead of tabs, making it impossible to change.  Now, 
> there may be many different ways to solve this problem but the first impulse 
> I had was to write a small Ruby script to reformat the code.
>     Now, a certain pattern came up in my solution that I have seen before. 
> I wanted to do something like this:
> 
> num_tabs = num_spaces / tab_width
> tabs = num_tabs.collect { "\t" }.join
> 
>     ...but I discovered that there is not collect method in the integer 
> object.  The best I could come up with was:
> 
> tabs = ''
> num_tabs.times { tabs << "\t" }
> 
>     Is there a more succinct, more Ruby-esque way to do this?
>     Thank you...

$ expand --help
Usage: expand [OPTION]... [FILE]...
Convert tabs in each FILE to spaces, writing to standard output.
With no FILE, or when FILE is -, read standard input.

Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.
   -i, --initial       do not convert tabs after non blanks
   -t, --tabs=NUMBER   have tabs NUMBER characters apart, not 8
   -t, --tabs=LIST     use comma separated list of explicit tab positions
       --help     display this help and exit
       --version  output version information and exit

Report bugs to <bug-coreutils / gnu.org>.

:-)

	robert