Convert tabs to spaces in a .NET string

Question

I am building a text parser using regular expressions. I need to convert all tab characters in a string to space characters. I cannot assume how many spaces a tab should encompass otherwise I could replace a tab with, say, 4 space characters. Is there any good solution for this type of problem. I need to do this in code so I cannot use an external tool.

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Unfortunately, none of these answers address the problem with which I am encountered. I am extracting text from external text files and I cannot assume how they were created or which operating system was used to create them. I believe the length of the tab character can vary so if I encounter a tab when I am reading the text file, I want to know how many space characters I should replace it with.

Answer 1

I am not sure if my solution is more efficient in execution, but it is more compact in code. This is close to the solution by user ckal, but reassembles the split strings using the Join function rather than '+='.

public static string ExpandTabs(string input, int tabLength)
{
    string[] parts = input.Split('\t');
    int count = 0;
    int maxpart = parts.Count() - 1;
    foreach (string part in parts)
    {
        if (count < maxpart)
            parts[count] = part + new string(' ', tabLength - (part.Length % tabLength));
        count++;
    }
    return(string.Join("", parts));
}

Answer 2

I'm not sure how tabs will read in from a Unix text file, or whatever your various formats are, but this works for inline text. Perhaps it will help.

var textWithTabs = "some\tvalues\tseperated\twith\ttabs";
var textWithSpaces = string.Empty;

var textValues = textWithTabs.Split('\t');

foreach (var val in textValues)
{
    textWithSpaces += val + new string(' ', 8 - val.Length % 8);
}

Console.WriteLine(textWithTabs);
Console.WriteLine(textWithSpaces);
Console.Read();