Hi, Doesn't look too bad. First you want something along the lines of

my $balpar_re=qr{
        (
          \(                                 # opening (
            (?:[^'"()]++                     # Not a ', ", ( or ) - no
+ backtracking
# incorrect              |(?:'(?:[^']|\')*?')           #' a single qu
+ote string
# incorrect              |(?:"(?:[^"]|\")*?")           #" a double qu
+ote string
              |(?:'(?:\\'|[^'])*?')           #' a single quote string
              |(?:"(?:\\"|[^"])*?")           #" a double quote string
               |(?-1)                         # must be a ( or ) so re
+curse
            )*+                              # zero or more time - no 
+backtracking
          \)                                 # closing )
        )
        }x;
[download]

so you can get a "(" with its matching ")". Then you want a substitution regex that grabs the contents of each of the sets of balanced parenthesis and feeds them to a function that processes them (one set at a time). Note the above regex does deal with quoted strings.

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use Data::Dumper;
use strict;
use warnings;

my $string=q{INSERT INTO sample_table (first_name,last_name) VALUES ('
+John','Doe'),('John','Smith'),('Foo','O\'Bar'),('Baz','D\'Qux (II)'),
+('(and so on, ','and so forth);');};

my $balpar_re=qr{
        (
          \(                                 # opening (
            (?:[^'"()]++                     # Not a ', ", ( or ) - no
+ backtracking
              |(?:'(?:\\'|[^'])*?')           #' a single quote string
              |(?:"(?:\\"|[^"])*?")           #" a double quote string
              |(?-1)                         # must be a ( or ) so rec
+urse
            )*+                              # zero or more time - no 
+backtracking
          \)                                 # closing )
        )
        }x;

$string=~ s{$balpar_re}{mung($1)}ge;
exit;

sub mung {
    warn Data::Dumper->Dump([\@_],[qw(*_)]),' ';
    }
[download]

gives

@_ = (
       '(first_name,last_name)'
     );
  at perlmonks.pl line 25.
@_ = (
       '(\'John\',\'Doe\')'
     );
  at perlmonks.pl line 25.
@_ = (
       '(\'John\',\'Smith\')'
     );
  at perlmonks.pl line 25.
@_ = (
       '(\'Foo\',\'O\\\'Bar\')'
     );
  at perlmonks.pl line 25.
@_ = (
       '(\'Baz\',\'D\\\'Qux (II)\')'
     );
  at perlmonks.pl line 25.
@_ = (
       '(\'(and so on, \',\'and so forth);\')'
     );
  at perlmonks.pl line 25.
[download]

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