CODEWITHSUNDEEP
tabskeyboard
feng smith
feng smith

Reputation: 1537

what does tab key mean?

This is my code:

String s = "This\tis\tmy\tsmall\texample\tstring\twhich\tI'm\tgoing\tto\tuse\tfor\tpattern\tmatching.";
    System.out.println(s);

it printed

This    is  my  small   example string  which   I'm going   to  use for pattern matching.

How many spaces does the "\t" key occupy? Sometime it occupy one space,sometime it occupy two spaces, Sometime it occupy five spaces.why?Any help would be appreciate.

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Upvotes: 0

Views: 235

Answers (2)

aish123
aish123

Reputation: 141

You should use " " instead of "/t".

A tab in a string usually occupies either 4 or 8 column spaces. Here, these column spaces also include the word length. If your word length is less than 4, it would take 4 column spaces otherwise 8 spaces.

Eg- 'The\t' is equivalent to 'The*' and 'small\t' to 'small***'

Upvotes: 0

Thilo
Thilo

Reputation: 262504

There is the concept of tab size (usually 8), which is configurable, but that does not directly determine how much visual space a given tab uses.

If you enter a tab, it moves to the next tab position. For example from 3 -> 8. Or from 6 -> 8. It does not move a fixed amount of spaces, it depends on where the "cursor" is at the moment.

In a publishing/layout context, where you have non-proportional fonts, the tab size may not even be a number of characters, but rather a physical width (like an inch).

Upvotes: 1

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