horizontal tabulation

1 definition found

horizontal tabulation - Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (26 May 2007) :

  horizontal tabulation
  HT
  \t
  TAB
  
     <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 "\t" in C, Unix, and derivatives.
  
     (1999-07-05)