expandtabs acts unexpectedly

[digisatori at gmail.com]

On Aug 19, 4:16 pm, Peter Brett <pe... at peter-b.co.uk> wrote:
> "digisat... at gmail.com" <digisat... at gmail.com> writes:
> > Python 2.6.2 (release26-maint, Apr 19 2009, 01:56:41)
> > [GCC 4.3.3] on linux2
> > Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
> >>>> ' test\ttest'.expandtabs(4)
> > ' test   test'
> >>>> 'test \ttest'.expandtabs(4)
> > 'test    test'
>
> > 1st example: expect returning 4 spaces between 'test', 3 spaces
> > returned
> > 2nd example: expect returning 5 spaces between 'test', 4 spaces
> > returned
>
> > Is it a bug or something, please advice.
>
> Consider where the 4-space tabstops are relative to those strings:
>
>  test   test
> test    test
> ^   ^   ^
>
> So no, it's not a bug.
>
> If you just want to replace the tab characters by spaces, use:
>
>   >>> " test\ttest".replace("\t", "    ")
>   ' test    test'
>   >>> "test \ttest".replace("\t", "    ")
>   'test     test'
>
> HTH,
>
>                                Peter
>
> --
> Peter Brett <pe... at peter-b.co.uk>
> Remote Sensing Research Group
> Surrey Space Centre

You corrected me for the understanding of tab stop. Great explanation.
Thank you so much.