Tab character width in Terminal

Question

Default tab width for Mac OS X Terminal.app is 8. I want to change it to 2. How can I do it?

I've found tabs command, but I can't figure out how to use it.

Solution

To set your tab with to 2 spaces, use this command in the Terminal App:

tabs -2

Replace 2 with your desired width in spaces.

View the full manual for tabs to learn about all options.

Comments

[Victor Gavro]

Link above now at developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Referen‌​ce/…

[Tobia]

I can't get tabs command to work properly. If I try echo $'12345678|\n\t|' on a new Terminal, I can see the default 8 tab width working correctly. But if I try tabs -4; echo $'1234|\n\t|' I get misaligned pipe symbols. Is this a bug in Terminal?

[Victor Gavro]

Works as expected for me with correct alignment. What is your terminal windows size, what version of OSX are you on and what font (and font size) are you using ?