> 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);

>