Select Code to Download

A     B
      C
D
   E

A\tB
\tC
D\t
   E\t

# first remove tabs from data and sub in 4 spaces
$_ = s/\t/    /g for @cols
my $row = join "\t", @cols;
print SOMEFILE $row, "\n";

@cols = ( "foo", "\t", "bar" );
print "original '@cols' ", scalar @cols, "\n";
...
original 'foo      bar' 3
row      'foo    <%tab%>    bar'
retreive 'foo      bar' 3