<
character> (
tab, Control-I, HT,
ASCII 9) A character which
when displayed or printed causes the following character to be
placed at the next "tabstop" - the column whose number is a
multiple of the current
tab width. Commonly (especially in
Unix(?)) the
tab width is eight, so, counting from the left
margin (column zero), the
tab stops are at columns 8, 16, 24,
up to the width of the screen or page.
A
tab width of four or two is often preferred when indenting
program
source code to conserve indentation.
Represented as " " in
C,
Unix, and derivatives.
(1999-07-05)