How to replace custom tabs with spaces in a string, depend on the size of the tab?

Question

I\'m trying to write a python function not using any modules that will take a string that has tabs and replace the tabs with spaces appropriate for an inputted tabstop size.

Answer 1

For a tab length of 5:

>>> s = "123\t123"
>>> print ''.join('%-5s' % item for item in s.split('\t'))
123  123  
>>>