how to insert tab while in iedit-mode

Question

How to insert <TAB> while in iedit mode?

following example:

int blah; //< x
float moo; //< y
void foobar; //< z

Now I select '//<' and go into iedit-mode, because I want to align those comments nicely with a single tab character. I'd like to get following result:

int blah;   //< x
float moo;  //< y
void foobar;    //< z

It doesn't look good here on stackexchange, because of wrong tab width.

Anyway, when in iedit-mode <tab> and S-<tab> switches to next/previous occurence.

Edit: Duplicate of question to Emacs shell and telnet? This question is solved by the same solution. But I would have never searched for that to solve my iedit problem.

Answer 1

Use quoted-insert, bound to C-q by default. It'll insert the next key literally, without triggering any other functions bound to that key.

So you'd say C-q TAB to get what you want.