It ain't simple. Your 'dumb' way isn't correct. Consider that the following are valid Perl strings too: 
q [Jon [Maddog] Orwant];
q "Jon \"Maddog\" Orwant";

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Your regex doesn't match any of them correctly.

You might be best off using Text::Balanced.

Abigail

In reply to Re: [regex] matching Perl quoted strings by Abigail-II
in thread [regex] matching Perl quoted strings by Jaap

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