elisp search-forward problem - function stops on search failed error

[acomber]

I wrote a function to replace tab characters with a string as in:

(defun do-cols () 
  "convert tab char to html td delim"
  (interactive)
  (goto-char (point-min)) 
     (while (search-forward "\t")
        (insert "
")
     )
) 

which works fine but on finishing I see in the command window: Search
failed: "    "

I think that when this error occurs the lisp function stops running.
That doesn't matter for simple use of do-cols but I want to call the
function from a bigger lisp function and I think if this error occurs
then the calling lisp function stops processing.

so anyway, I changed the function like this:

(defun do-cols () 
  "convert tab char to html td delim"
  (interactive)
  (goto-char (point-min)) 
     (while (search-forward "\t", nil, t)
        (insert "
")
     )
)

But this function does nothing, get error:

Symbol's value as variable is void: \,

How can I fix do-cols so it actually works and will allow a calling
function to continue processing to next line?

eg I might want:

(defun do-table () 
  "convert word table to html"
  (interactive)
  (goto-char (point-min)) 
  (do-cols)
  (do-rows)
)




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