Length of tab character

Question

Is it possible to type a specific width of tab using \t, or is it a system defined length?

Example code:

print 'test\ttest 2'

Answer 1

It is not possible. But, you can replace every tab with custom amounts of spaces using str.expandtabs:

print repr('test\ttest 2'.expandtabs())
# output: 'test    test 2'

print repr('test\ttest 2'.expandtabs(2))
# output: 'test  test 

Edit: note that when using str.expandtabs, the width of tab will depend on where in string the tab is:

print repr('test\ttest 2'.expandtabs(8))
print repr('tessst\ttest 2'.expandtabs(8))
# output: 'test    test 2'
#         'tessst  test 2'

If you want each tab to be replaced by specifyed number of spaces, you can use str.replace:

print repr('test\ttest 2'.replace('\t', ' ' * 8))
print repr('tessst\ttest 2'.replace('\t', ' ' * 8))
# output: 'test        test 2' 
#         'tessst        test 2'