How can I convert tabs to spaces in every file of a directory?

by

Simple replacement with sed is okay but not the best possible solution. If there are “extra” spaces between the tabs they will still be there after substitution, so the margins will be ragged. Tabs expanded in the middle of lines will also not work correctly. In bash, we can say instead

find . -name '*.java' ! -type d -exec bash -c 'expand -t 4 "$0" > /tmp/e && mv /tmp/e "$0"' {} \;

to apply expand to every Java file in the current directory tree. Remove / replace the -name argument if you’re targeting some other file types. As one of the comments mentions, be very careful when removing -name or using a weak, wildcard. You can easily clobber repository and other hidden files without intent. This is why the original answer included this:

You should always make a backup copy of the tree before trying something like this in case something goes wrong.

More Related Contents:

  1. How can I check if a directory exists in a Bash shell script?
  2. In the shell, what does ” 2>&1 ” mean?
  3. Difference between sh and Bash
  4. Pass commands as input to another command (su, ssh, sh, etc)
  5. Why do you need ./ (dot-slash) before executable or script name to run it in bash?
  6. Can I export a variable to the environment from a Bash script without sourcing it?
  7. Bash tool to get nth line from a file
  8. Which characters need to be escaped when using Bash?
  9. How to run the sftp command with a password from Bash script?
  10. “~/Desktop/test.txt: No such file or directory”
  11. How to suppress Terminated message after killing in bash?
  12. How to represent multiple conditions in a shell if statement?
  13. Delete files older than 10 days using shell script in Unix [duplicate]
  14. “Invalid Arithmetic Operator” when doing floating-point math in bash
  15. Copy folder recursively, excluding some folders
  16. Variable interpolation in the shell
  17. How do I pause my shell script for a second before continuing?
  18. Is there a way to make bash job control quiet?
  19. What does ” 2>&1 ” mean?
  20. What’s a concise way to check that environment variables are set in a Unix shell script?
  21. Bash regex =~ operator
  22. executing shell command in background from script [duplicate]
  23. How do I check if a directory exists or not in a Bash shell script?
  24. Waiting for background processes to finish before exiting script
  25. Variables as commands in Bash scripts
  26. How to split a file into equal parts, without breaking individual lines? [duplicate]
  27. Convert Unix timestamp to a date string
  28. Using Bash to display a progress indicator (spinner) [duplicate]
  29. Extract version number from a string
  30. How to wait on all child (and grandchild etc) process spawned by a script

Leave a Comment