detab: a pedestrian string detabulator

replaces TAB characters with the appropriate number of SPACE characters

DETAB replaces TAB characters with the appropriate number of SPACE characters from the contents of a file or a cell array (containing strings) such that the absolute position of text entries is preserved.

This is particularly useful for populating UICONTROLs (eg, listboxes) with the contents of files or strings that contain TABs

see
> help detab
for explanations and the accompanying image for an example