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1. Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Sunday, 07-Jul-2024 22:51:10 JST Aral Balkan

   You’re on a linux-y machine and you want to convert tabs in a file to spaces (say, two) and your editor doesn’t support that (hello, Helix 👀):

   expand my.file -t 2 > my.file.tmp && rm my.file.tmp && mv my.file.tmp my.file

   (Updated as original version just deletes the original file.) 🤦♂️

   #linux #terminal #tabs #spaces #dev

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Sunday, 07-Jul-2024 22:56:46 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Matthew Schulkind

     @mschulkind Oh, ffs sake, fixed it (thanks) :)

   • Matthew Schulkind (mschulkind@sigmoid.social)'s status on Sunday, 07-Jul-2024 22:56:47 JST Matthew Schulkind

     in reply to

     @aral now with the edit, it doesn't delete the original, it just does nothing and produces an error for mv

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Sunday, 07-Jul-2024 22:59:29 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • James Wells

     @nikatjef Ah, yes, thanks – updated :)

     (I can never remember which commands freak out and which don’t before overwriting an existing file.)

   • James Wells (nikatjef@mastodon.acm.org)'s status on Sunday, 07-Jul-2024 22:59:30 JST James Wells

     in reply to

     @aral
     You don't need to rm before the mv as the mv will replace the existing file.

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Sunday, 07-Jul-2024 23:03:03 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • David Somers

     @omz13 I’m actually surprised expand doesn’t have the ability to change a file in place by default.

   • David Somers (omz13@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 07-Jul-2024 23:03:04 JST David Somers

     in reply to

     @aral You didn’t use sed for this?!

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Monday, 08-Jul-2024 04:32:05 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Nathan Lövsund 🐒 🚀
     • Myles Lewando

     @codemacabre @nlovsund That’s an interesting consideration; thanks. Will look into it.

   • Myles Lewando (codemacabre@front-end.social)'s status on Monday, 08-Jul-2024 04:32:08 JST Myles Lewando

     in reply to

     • Nathan Lövsund 🐒 🚀

     @nlovsund @aral Tabs over spaces seem to be preferred: https://adamtuttle.codes/blog/2021/tabs-vs-spaces-its-an-accessibility-issue/

   • Nathan Lövsund 🐒 🚀 (nlovsund@mastodon.acc.sunet.se)'s status on Monday, 08-Jul-2024 04:32:09 JST Nathan Lövsund 🐒 🚀

     in reply to

     @aral Seeing as you are mentioning tabs and spaces, I have a question you might be well placed to answer: do you know which is best from an accessibility pov? (I was planning on web searching this). I have a personal preferences for spaces, but I am willing to change my ways.