How to set 4 space tab in bash

Question

It look like set tabstop=4 in VIM, but I don't know how to set it in bash

for example:

echo -e "1234567890\t321\n1\t2\n123\t1" 

current output:

1234567890      321 1       2 123     1 

I want output like this:

1234567890  321 1   2 123 1 

It can be shown in anywhere, just like cat somefile or php -r 'echo "\t123";'

How can I set tab width in bash?

Answer 1

That's not a property of your shell (or php or cat). It's your terminal that manages the output.

Use the tabs command to change the behavior:

$ tabs 4  $ echo -e "a\tb"       a   b $ tabs 12  $ echo -e "a\tb"  a           b 

(tabs is specified in POSIX, and output above is "faked": it's still a tab character between the two letters.)