Minimally: s/\t/\\t/g;

Something more complete:

my %ws = (
    "\x09" => qw( \t ),  
    "\x0A" => qw( \n ),
    "\x0C" => qw( \f ),  
    "\x0D" => qw( \r ), 
    "\x20" => qw( \s ),
); 
while (<>) {
    s/(\s)/$ws{$1}/g;
    print;
    print "\n";    # keep it line for line. 
}
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Note that printing "\s" for a space is pretty contrived... "\s" really only makes sense in the context of a regular expression. It isn't a real escape for a space.

Something like this would be more general...

  
perl -pe 's/(\s)/sprintf"\\x%02x",ord$1/ge;$_.=$/'
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Update: Added \f and more general one-liner.

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";