Yes. Not complex. 

    # lib/Anti/Tidy.pm
    package Anti::Tidy;
    
    use overload                    # Overload Perl operations
        '""'    => \&_stringify,
    ;
    
    sub new { return bless {}, shift };
    
    sub _stringify { 
        my $self = shift;
        for ( $self->{-string} ) {
            s/[\t\n]//gs;
            s/\\t/\t/g;
            s/\\n/\n/g;
        };
        return $self;
    };
    
    sub put_string {
        my $self = shift;
        $self->{-string} = shift;
        return $self;
    };
    
    # bin/yourscript.pl
    use Anti::Tidy;
    
    my $uglyfruit = Anti::Tidy->new;
    $uglyfruit->put_string('Hideous \t big old string
       with embedded         hard tabs and 
       hard newlines         to be ignored\n
       but with escape \t sequences to be \n expanded.');
    say $uglyfruit;

[download]

This code is totally untested and may or may not work, or may explode, scattering wheels and cogs across your bench. You may want to fool with the regexes to handle spaces on either side of your tabs and newlines of either persuation.

But this should do the trick. I assume no responsibility for the result.

I'm not the guy you kill, I'm the guy you buy. —Michael Clayton

In reply to Re: Formatting Strings Without Interpolating Whitespace by Xiong
in thread Formatting Strings Without Interpolating Whitespace by BJ_Covert_Action

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