You seriously might wish to consider ... a brute-force loop.   Initialize a string-index, and initialize an in_quotes flag to false.   While that index has not yet passed the end of the string, look for a quote-mark or a tab.   A quote-mark flips the value of the in_quotes flag.   A tab, if in_quotes, is removed and the loop is restarted without incrementing the index (i.e. next) because the string just shrank and we don’t want to overlook any characters.

Seriously... you won’t go home and tell your significant other “honey, let me tell you about the amazing algorithm I designed today,” but it will do the job perfectly well.