... might be one for Parse::RecDescent.

If you need something performant, P::RD may not be the way to go. But if you've never programmed a parser before, using P::RD will make you a better programmer for the experience.

Also, Parse::RecDescent is very well documented.

A final bit of info to consider is that there is a set of regexes that Perl will not play nice with (due to how the regex engine works, being nondeterministic, IIRC). By "not play nice," I mean take billions of CPU cycles for ostensibly simple decisions. I think that dealing with optional escaped quoting with regexes might be putting you into that territory.