I looks like it is intended to take everything in between the double quotes by capturing what is NOT(^) a double quote. There could be problems with this approach though. For instance if there is a double quote inside the string that is not intended to be a closing quote such as the string "supplied on 5.25" disk". There is probably a better way to extract the string from between the double quotes i.e. /^"(.*)"$/ might do it if the entire string is wrapped in double quotes.