Use the expandtabs()
method to set the number of spaces for a tab.
You can set any number of spaces, but when no argument is given, the default is 8.
Basic Usage
my_string = 'B\tR'
print(my_string.expandtabs())
#output: B R
Notice the 7 spaces between the letters B and R.
The \t
is at position two after one character, so it will be replaced with 7 spaces.
Let’s look at another example.
my_string = 'WORL\tD'
print(my_string.expandtabs())
#output: WORL D
Since WORL
has four characters, the \t
is replaced with 4 spaces to make it a total of 8, the default tabsize.
The code below gives us 4 spaces for the first tab after four characters ‘WORL’ and 7 spaces for the second tab after one character ‘D’.
my_string = 'WORL\tD\tCUP'
print(my_string.expandtabs())
#output: WORL D CUP
Custom Tabsize
It is possible to set the tabsize as needed.
In this example the tabsize is 4, which gives us 3 spaces after the char ‘B’.
my_string = 'B\tR'
print(my_string.expandtabs(4))
#output: B R
This code has tabsize set to 6, which gives us 5 spaces after the char ‘B’.
my_string = 'B\tR'
print(my_string.expandtabs(6))
#output: B R