🚀 go-pugleaf

Not true.

You are working in a script language. That translates "\t" to a tab while the script is being parsed, and (apparently) the tab survives the translation into the 'real' application call to search.

Next level is escaping the tab: "\\t". Now the codes get translated (by the parser) into "\t", which is, ta-da, a tab for the application search string.

So, you have to escape the escaped escape (?), leading to the somewhat bewildering "\\\\t". Double backslashes are translated into single ones ("\\t") which is passed over to the search inside InDesign, which translates it into "\t", which is what you asked.

The "^" is slightly easier, as it (probably!) is not 'pre-parsed' by your script, just by the InDesign Search engine. As in InDesign itself, to search for a single "^", enter two.

By the way ... there is no single search string in which both "\t" and "^p" are translated into a tab and paragraph return. The former is a GREP search expression, the latter a native InDesign Text search one.