How many spaces is a tab?

Answer 1

This is always definable from within whatever application you are using. In Word processor programs for instance, you can define how many spaces each press of the Tab button will go. The default is normally five, unless it has been changed.

Answer 2

It depends. The space is a intercharacter gap which does not have the same amount of space as the equivalent characters, particularly in a proportionally sized font. The tab, on the other hand, is a variable sized gap that aligns with the "next tab stop", said stops being chosen by the typist as a function of what is being written. Typically, tabs are 0.5 inches apart, but they can be set and cleared at will.

A common error, particularly in older word processing software such as WordPerfect, which displayed spaces in a mono-spaced font, but printed them proportionally, is to use spaces when tabs should be used.

This situation is made even worse in modern text editors and IDEs used for programming. Both tend to display code in a fixed-space font, but as there is no definitive translation between spaces and tabs, hitting "Tab" will usually insert a number of spaces equal to whatever style template the text editor/IDE is set up to use. 2, 4, and 8 spaces are all commonly substituted (or displayed as equivalent) to a tab. This gets even worse, as many text editors/IDEs actually store the tab character in the file (rather than the indicated number of spaces), so, if viewed in another text editor/IDE with a different style, they are substituted for a different number of spaces, which causes all sorts of misalignments.

Answer 3

On average: 5.

Sometimes the setting can be fiddled with. Then it could be 14 or even 100!

Answer 4

14

Answer 5

15