tabwriter is a crate that implements
[elastic tabstops](http://nickgravgaard.com/elastictabstops/index.html). It
provides both a library for wrapping Rust `Writer`s and a small program that
exposes the same functionality at the command line.
[](https://travis-ci.org/BurntSushi/tabwriter)
[](https://crates.io/crates/tabwriter)
Dual-licensed under MIT or the [UNLICENSE](http://unlicense.org).
### Simple example of library
```rust
use std::io::MemWriter;
use tabwriter::TabWriter;
let mut tw = TabWriter::new(MemWriter::new());
tw.write_str("
Bruce Springsteen\tBorn to Run
Bob Seger\tNight Moves
Metallica\tBlack
The Boss\tDarkness on the Edge of Town
").unwrap();
tw.flush().unwrap();
let written = String::from_utf8(tw.unwrap().unwrap()).unwrap();
assert_eq!(written.as_slice(), "
Bruce Springsteen Born to Run
Bob Seger Night Moves
Metallica Black
The Boss Darkness on the Edge of Town
");
```
You can see an example of *real* use in my
[CSV toolkit](https://github.com/BurntSushi/xcsv/blob/master/src/table.rs#L37-L40).
### Simple example of command line utility
```bash
abc\tmnopqrstuv\txyz
abcmnoxyz\tmore text
a\tb\tc
[andrew@Liger tabwriter] ./target/tabwriter < sample
a b c
abc mnopqrstuv xyz
abcmnoxyz more text
a b c
```
Notice that once a column block is broken, alignment starts over again.
### Documentation
The API is fully documented with some examples:
[http://burntsushi.net/rustdoc/tabwriter/](http://burntsushi.net/rustdoc/tabwriter/).
### Installation
This crate works with Cargo. Assuming you have Rust and
[Cargo](http://crates.io/) installed, simply check out the source and run
tests:
```bash
git checkout git://github.com/BurntSushi/tabwriter
cd tabwriter
cargo test
```
You can also add `tabwriter` as a dependency to your project's `Cargo.toml`:
```toml
[dependencies]
tabwriter = "0.1"
```
### Dealing with ANSI escape codes
If you want `tabwriter` to be aware of ANSI escape codes, then compile it with
the `ansi_formatting` feature enabled.