If you're not interested in backslash processing, this works, albeit not particularly efficiently:

  s{ [ \t]* ( (?: " .*? " )? ) }{$1}xg;

    -- Chip Salzenberg, Free-Floating Agent of Chaos

In reply to Re: Remove Tabs and white space from a line except in Quotes by chip
in thread Remove Tabs and white space from a line except in Quotes by SmokeyB

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