text/tabwriter: clarify documentation

More clearly distinguish between tab-terminated cells
which are part of an (aligned) column, and non-tab terminated
cells which are not part of a column. Added additional examples.

For #14412.

Change-Id: If72607385752e221eaa2518238b11f48fbcb8a90
Reviewed-on: https://go-review.googlesource.com/19855
Reviewed-by: Alan Donovan <adonovan@google.com>

src/text/tabwriter/example_test.go

@@ -36,3 +36,38 @@ func ExampleWriter_Init() {
 	//     a     b       c         d.
 	//   123 12345 1234567 123456789.
 }
+
+func Example_elastic() {
+	// Observe how the b's and the d's, despite appearing in the
+	// second cell of each line, belong to different columns.
+	w := tabwriter.NewWriter(os.Stdout, 0, 0, 1, '.', tabwriter.AlignRight|tabwriter.Debug)
+	fmt.Fprintln(w, "a\tb\tc")
+	fmt.Fprintln(w, "aa\tbb\tcc")
+	fmt.Fprintln(w, "aaa\t") // trailing tab
+	fmt.Fprintln(w, "aaaa\tdddd\teeee")
+	w.Flush()
+
+	// output:
+	// ....a|..b|c
+	// ...aa|.bb|cc
+	// ..aaa|
+	// .aaaa|.dddd|eeee
+}
+
+func Example_trailingTab() {
+	// Observe that the third line has no trailing tab,
+	// so its final cell is not part of an aligned column.
+	const padding = 3
+	w := tabwriter.NewWriter(os.Stdout, 0, 0, padding, '-', tabwriter.AlignRight|tabwriter.Debug)
+	fmt.Fprintln(w, "a\tb\taligned\t")
+	fmt.Fprintln(w, "aa\tbb\taligned\t")
+	fmt.Fprintln(w, "aaa\tbbb\tunaligned") // no trailing tab
+	fmt.Fprintln(w, "aaaa\tbbbb\taligned\t")
+	w.Flush()
+
+	// output:
+	// ------a|------b|---aligned|
+	// -----aa|-----bb|---aligned|
+	// ----aaa|----bbb|unaligned
+	// ---aaaa|---bbbb|---aligned|
+}

src/text/tabwriter/tabwriter.go

@@ -33,18 +33,32 @@ type cell struct {
 // A Writer is a filter that inserts padding around tab-delimited
 // columns in its input to align them in the output.
 //
-// The Writer treats incoming bytes as UTF-8 encoded text consisting
-// of cells terminated by (horizontal or vertical) tabs or line
-// breaks (newline or formfeed characters). Cells in adjacent lines
-// constitute a column. The Writer inserts padding as needed to
-// make all cells in a column have the same width, effectively
-// aligning the columns. It assumes that all characters have the
-// same width except for tabs for which a tabwidth must be specified.
-// Note that cells are tab-terminated, not tab-separated: trailing
-// non-tab text at the end of a line does not form a column cell.
+// The Writer treats incoming bytes as UTF-8-encoded text consisting
+// of cells terminated by horizontal ('\t') or vertical ('\v') tabs,
+// and newline ('\n') or formfeed ('\f') characters; both newline and
+// formfeed act as line breaks.
+//
+// Tab-terminated cells in contiguous lines constitute a column. The
+// Writer inserts padding as needed to make all cells in a column have
+// the same width, effectively aligning the columns. It assumes that
+// all characters have the same width, except for tabs for which a
+// tabwidth must be specified. Column cells must be tab-terminated, not
+// tab-separated: non-tab terminated trailing text at the end of a line
+// forms a cell but that cell is not part of an aligned column.
+// For instance, in this example (where | stands for a horizontal tab):
+//
+//	aaaa|bbb|d
+//	aa  |b  |dd
+//	a   |
+//	aa  |cccc|eee
+//
+// the b and c are in distinct columns (the b column is not contiguous
+// all the way). The d and e are not in a column at all (there's no
+// terminating tab, nor would the column be contiguous).
 //
 // The Writer assumes that all Unicode code points have the same width;
-// this may not be true in some fonts.
+// this may not be true in some fonts or if the string contains combining
+// characters.
 //
 // If DiscardEmptyColumns is set, empty columns that are terminated
 // entirely by vertical (or "soft") tabs are discarded. Columns
@@ -64,9 +78,9 @@ type cell struct {
 // width of the escaped text is always computed excluding the Escape
 // characters.
 //
-// The formfeed character ('\f') acts like a newline but it also
-// terminates all columns in the current line (effectively calling
-// Flush). Cells in the next line start new columns. Unless found
+// The formfeed character acts like a newline but it also terminates
+// all columns in the current line (effectively calling Flush). Tab-
+// terminated cells in the next line start new columns. Unless found
 // inside an HTML tag or inside an escaped text segment, formfeed
 // characters appear as newlines in the output.
 //