expand writes the contents of each given file, or standard input if none are given or for a file of ‘-’, to standard output, with tab characters converted to the appropriate number of spaces. Synopsis:
expand [option]... [file]...
By default, expand converts all tabs to spaces. It preserves backspace characters in the output; they decrement the column count for tab calculations. The default action is equivalent to -t 8 (set tabs every 8 columns).
The program accepts the following options. Also see Common options.
For compatibility, GNU expand also accepts the obsolete
option syntax, -t1[,t2].... New scripts
should use -t t1[,t2]... instead.
An exit status of zero indicates success, and a nonzero value indicates failure.