Re: tabs in `@example`

On Fri, Mar 13, 2026 at 07:16:01AM +0000, Werner LEMBERG wrote:
> 
> In the info file I read the following about `@example`.
> 
>      Caution: Do not use tabs in the lines of an example!  (Or
>      anywhere else in Texinfo, except in verbatim environments.)  TeX
>      treats tabs as single spaces, and that is not what they look
>      like.
> 
> However, this is not fully correct.  Consider the following input
> file.
> 
> ```
> \input texinfo
> 
> @example
> no leading space
> 	leading tab	another tab
>         eight leading spaces
> @end example
> 
> @bye
> ```
> 
> If processed with `texi2pdf`, the leading tab vanishes completely (as
> shown in the image); it is not treated as a single space.

This part of the manual is correct:

"TeX treats tabs as single spaces"

This part is confusing:

"and that is not what they look like"

This is confusing because this conflates a space character (hex 0x20)
with a space - a physical space between words.  It is not true that
a space character input to TeX always has the same appearance in the
output.

At the start of a line, a tab character is treated the same as a space
character, i.e. it is ignored.