on your grammar before calling C{parseString} (see L{I{parseWithTabs}}) - define your parse action using the full C{(s,loc,toks)} signature, and reference the input string using the parse action's C{s} argument - explictly expand the tabs in your input string before calling C{parseString} Example:: Word('a').parseString('aaaaabaaa') # -> ['aaaaa'] Word('a').parseString('aaaaabaaa', parseAll=True) # -> Exception: Expected end of text r