> perldoc -q tabs
Found in /usr/local/lib/perl5/5.6.1/pod/perlfaq4.pod
  How do I expand tabs in a string?

      You can do it yourself:

  1 while $string =~ s/\t+/' ' x (length($&) * 8 - length($`) % 8)/e;

      Or you can just use the Text::Tabs module (part of the standard perl distribution).

  use Text::Tabs;
  @expanded_lines = expand(@lines_with_tabs);

> 

##</code><code>##

   Occasionally, you can't use just a `/g' to get all the changes to
   occur that you might want.  Here are two common cases:

      # put commas in the right places in an integer
      1 while s/(\d)(\d\d\d)(?!\d)/$1,$2/g;

      # expand tabs to 8-column spacing
      1 while s/\t+/' ' x (length($&)*8 - length($`)%8)/e;


##</code><code>##


	print "\et" x ($tab/8), ' ' x ($tab%8);	# tab over