Question: From the C standard (5.2.2 Character display semantics):

> 
> \t (horizontal tab) Moves the active position to the next horizontal
>  tabulation position on the current line. **If the active position is at
>  or past the last deﬁned horizontal tabulation position**, the behavior
>  of the display device is unspeciﬁed.
> 
> 
> 

Can someone give me a case where this is applicable?

Answer: 
Say, your text console has 80 character width and tabulation positions are 0,8,16,....72.
According to the standard, you know that if you send (print) one tabulation character to the console, your cursor moves to the 8th position. If two, then to 16th position .... If nine, then to 72th position. But if you send more tabulations, it's not specified where your cursor should be placed. For example, on my current console it's placed to the rightmost (79) position in that case but in no way should we rely on this assumption.
**About tabs**

> 
> Most terminal programs will have a tab stop at every 8th column.- For every "\t" you print the cursor goes to the next possible position ( *usually 8 spaces* ).
>  - If there is space for N tabulation characters in your console you can safely print from 0 to N "\t".
> 
> 
> 
> 

Let's say that my tiny console has space for only 4 tabs and (after a new line) I have the below code

```
printf ( "\t\t\t\t\t" );  // As you can see...
//...here I want to put 5 tabulation tabs on screen 

```

In this case we don't know how the last \t will be printed.

Note: Sometimes, if you print many \t like this; `printf("\t\t\t...\t\t);`  the cursor goes to previous lines, but we can't be sure if it will happen.