CTAB$

Syntax

CTAB$ (string$ [,tabdist]) tabdist=1..255

Location

BTool

CTAB$ is a function which will look for spaces in the supplied string$ and if there is at least a tabdist number of spaces, they will be replaced by the TAB character, CHR$(9), so that ETAB$ or editors / word-processors can re-expand them to the original string.

CTAB$ does not alter the actual string$ but will return it in its compressed form.

The default value of tabdist is 8, and the length of string$ is limited to 255 characters (so tabdist>255 does not make much sense).

WARNING

tabdist=0 will produce rubbish output and it is also possible that CTAB$ will crash the system. Negative values lead to nonsense results but do not harm the system.

CROSS-REFERENCE

ETAB$ expands the TAB marks.