| TABS(1) | General Commands Manual | TABS(1) | 
NAME
 tabs — set terminal tabs
SYNOPSIS
| tabs | [-n|-a|-a2|-c|-c2|-c3|-f|-p|-s|-u] [+m[n]] [-T type] | 
| tabs | [-T type] [+[n]] n1[,n2,...] | 
 
DESCRIPTION
 The 
tabs utility displays a series of characters that first clears the hardware terminal tab settings and then initializes the tab stops at the specified positions and optionally adjusts the margin.
The phrase "tab-stop position N" means that, from the start of a line of output, tabbing to position N shall cause the next character output to be in the (N+1)th column on that line.
The following options are supported:
- 
-n
- 
Specifies repetitive tab stops separated by a uniform number of columns, n, where n is a single digit decimal number. The default usage of tabs with no arguments is equivalent to tabs -8. When -0 is used, the tab stops are cleared and no new ones set.
- 
-a
- 
Assembler, applicable to some mainframes. Equivalent to tabs 1,10,16,36,72 .
- 
-a2
- 
Assembler, applicable to some mainframes. Equivalent to tabs 1,10,16,40,72
- 
-c
- 
COBOL, normal format. Equivalent to tabs 1,8,12,16,20,55
- 
-c2
- 
COBOL, compact format (columns 1 to 6 omitted). Equivalent to tabs 1,6,10,14,49
- 
-c3
- 
COBOL, compact format (columns 1 to 6 omitted), with more tabs than -c2. Equivalent to tabs 1,6,10,14,18,22,26,30,34,38,42,46,50,54,58,62,67
- 
-f
- 
FORTRAN. Equivalent to tabs 1,7,11,15,19,23
- 
-p
- 
PL/1. Equivalent to tabs 1,5,9,13,17,21,25,29,33,37,41,45,49,53,57,61
- 
-s
- 
SNOBOL. Equivalent to tabs 1,10,55
- 
-T type
- 
Indicates the type of terminal.
- 
-u
- 
Assembler, applicable to some mainframes. Equivalent to tabs 1,12,20,44
 
ENVIRONMENT
 The 
COLUMNS and 
TERM environment variables affect the execution of 
tabs as described in 
environ(7).
The -T option overrides TERM. If neither TERM nor the -T option are present, tabs will fail.
 
EXIT STATUS
 The tabs utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.
STANDARDS
 The tabs utility conforms to IEEE Std 1003.1 (“POSIX.1”).
HISTORY
 A tabs utility first appeared in PWB UNIX. This implementation was introduced in NetBSD 6.0.