Tab character in a string prints 8 spaces

[buran]

You need to distinguish between A. Tab length when convert tabs in your source code to spaces and B. Tab length when python expand tab escape sequence \t, e.g. when printing string.

A. converting tab to certain number of spaces (default=4) is feature of your IDE (in your case IDLE). Here the more important part is the conversion of tab to spaces (as PEP8 recommends to use spaces for indentation in the source code).

B. If you look at str.expandtabs(tabsize=8) method you will see that default tabsize value is 8. It's safe bet this is default/standard tabsize (i.e. even when not call expandtabs() method).

If you want to get different tab length

>>> print("Line 1\n\tLine 2")
Line 1
        Line 2
>>> print("Line 1\n\tLine 2".expandtabs(4))
Line 1
    Line 2
>>>