hi,

I think you're looking for the balance parenthesis regex of Jeffery Friedl. After tweeking for quoted strings it looks something like ...

 my ($np);
 # The initial balance parentheses expression with an embedded set is:
 # $np=qr/\( ([^()] | (??{$np})) *\)/x;
 # And quoted strings are "(?:[^"]|\")*" and '(?:[^']|\')*' or ('|")(?
+:[^\1]|\\1)*\1 so
 $np=qr/
          \(                           # The opening "("
              ((                       # We'll want this hence the cap
+turing ()
                  '(?:[^']|\')*?'      #' a single quote string
                  | "(?:[^"]|\")*?"    #" a double quote string
                  | [^()]              # not a parentheses
                  | (??{$np})
              )*)
          \)                           # and the closing ")"
      /x;

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In reply to Re: regex extraction for variable number of args by clueless newbie
in thread regex extraction for variable number of args by NetWallah

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