Golang : Convert spaces to tabs and back to spaces example

A simple example on how to convert spaces to tabs and convert back the tabs to spaces again in a given text string. Useful in a situation where you want to pre-parse a raw data file first before feeding to another parser for further processing.

Here you go!

 package main

 import (
 "fmt"
 "strings"
 "unicode"
 )

 func TabToSpace(input string) string {
 var result []string

 for _, i := range input {
 switch {
 // all these considered as space, including tab \t
 // '\t', '\n', '\v', '\f', '\r',' ', 0x85, 0xA0
 case unicode.IsSpace(i):
 result = append(result, " ") // replace tab with space
 case !unicode.IsSpace(i):
 result = append(result, string(i))
 }
 }
 return strings.Join(result, "")
 }

 func spaceToTab(input string) string {
 var result []string

 for _, i := range input {
 switch {
 case unicode.IsSpace(i):
 result = append(result, "\t")
 case !unicode.IsSpace(i):
 result = append(result, string(i))
 }
 }
 return strings.Join(result, "")
 }

 func main() {
 // text := "This is a line with a lot of spaces in between"
 text := "жѳМѭњЂЯёЧВ 一二三 handle alphabets = ขอพฮศโำฐเฦ abc世界你好123 ペツワケザユプルヂザ"
 fmt.Println("Before: ", text)

 output := spaceToTab(text)
 fmt.Println("After: ", output)

 fmt.Println("Back:", TabToSpace(output))

 }

Output:

Before: жѳМѭњЂЯёЧВ 一二三 handle alphabets = ขอพฮศโำฐเฦ abc世界你好123 ペツワケザユプルヂザ

After: жѳМѭњЂЯёЧВ 一二三 handle alphabets = ขอพฮศโำฐเฦ abc世界你好123 ペツワケザユプルヂザ

Back: жѳМѭњЂЯёЧВ 一二三 handle alphabets = ขอพฮศโำฐเฦ abc世界你好123 ペツワケザユプルヂザ

References:

https://golang.org/src/unicode/graphic.go?s=3997:4022#L116

https://www.socketloop.com/tutorials/golang-read-tab-delimited-file-with-encoding-csv-package