# Introduce tab in a message field

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/introduce-tab-in-a-message-field/83697>\
**Category:** Logstash\
**Created:** [April 26, 2017, 12:16pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/introduce-tab-in-a-message-field/83697 "2017-04-26T12:16:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![ddebast](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/ddebast/32/17697_2.png) [@ddebast](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/ddebast)\
**Post date:** [April 26, 2017, 12:16pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/introduce-tab-in-a-message-field/83697/1 "2017-04-26T12:16:12Z")

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Hello,

I need to reconstruct a field and want to introduce a horizontal tab (\t, 0x09).  
Within the filter part I set the following

mutate {  
replace =\> { "message" =\> "hello\tWorld" }  
}

But this is not working. As an output i'm using tcp and the message field in as follow "message" =\> "HellobackslashbackslashtWorld"

Anyone an idea?

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**Author:** ![pablosan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e19adc/32.png) [@pablosan](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/pablosan)\
**Post date:** [April 26, 2017, 3:37pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/introduce-tab-in-a-message-field/83697/2 "2017-04-26T15:37:30Z")

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Hi,

you could use the event API?

[https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/logstash/current/event-api.html](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/logstash/current/event-api.html)

event.get and then event.set

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [May 24, 2017, 3:50pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/introduce-tab-in-a-message-field/83697/3 "2017-05-24T15:50:36Z")

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