Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi All,

I just need to check for 'tabs' in my input file and need to replace all tabs into 'n' no. of spaces. Say for example if I give NO_OF_SPACE=5, then it should replace all tabs with 5 spaces

abc.in
#####
asdasdasd
\t\t\tasjkalskdl;asdsdjfksldfjklsdfxcmxm,cv
\t\t\t\t\t\taskjdkasdjkqwexc209384
\tasjask;
skldfklsdf

say my space count : 2 then my output file should come like below

abc.out
######
asdasdasd
asjkalskdl;asdsdjfksldfjklsdfxcmxm,cv
askjdkasdjkqwexc209384
asjask;
skldfklsdf


I know this command will work :
perl -pe 's/[\t]/\ \ \ \ /g' abc.in

But here I hard coded with 4 sapces. How can I modify the above code as generic??


Thanks in advance
saravana

'man expand'

Thanks vgersh99... It works....... :-)

expand -t 5 abc.in > abc.out