One thing to remeber about regular expressions in perl are that the charactors "*" and "+" are "greedy". In other words they will gobble up all the charactors they possibly can befor they fail. Hence the "*?" and "+?" constructions that make them "non-greedy" or rather they stop gobbling up charactors as soon as they make a match. so here is where greedy regular expressions come in handy

$text = "QUERY = \"SOME QUERY WITH \"\" (DOUBLE QUOTES)\" YEEHA";
$text =~ m/^(.*)"+\s(\w+)$/g;
print "dollar one =$1\n\ndollar two = $2\n\n";
# $1 == QUERY = "SOME QUERY WITH "" (DOUBLE QUOTES)
# $2 == YEEHA
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Just for fun try it like this and see what you get"

$text =~ m/^(.*)?"+\s(\w+)?$/g;
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little_mistress@mainhall.com

my $query = qq("SOME QUERY WITH "" (DOUBLE QUOTES)" YEEHA);

if ($query =~ /"(.*)"(.*)/) {
    my $inside = $1;
    my $outside = $2;

    print $inside, "\n", $outside, "\n";
}
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But I'm not sure if this is really what you want-- was that query merely an example, or is that really what all your queries look like?

If it's the former, and you're trying to do something more complicated than what you describe above--for example, match balanced text--you might take a look at perlfaq6, Can I use Perl regular expressions to match balanced text?.

Also, see Text::Balanced on CPAN. -- Ed.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use Text::Balanced "extract_delimited";

my @queries = (

    qq(QUERY = "SOME QUERY WITH "" (DOUBLE QUOTES)" YEEHA),
    qq(Johnson looked up and said "Pie is tasty!" People in Clarkstown
+ liked ""Pie"".),
    qq("You sir are an ""A\$\@hole""!" The chipmunks were naturally sh
+ocked.),
    qq("""No Way!""" """Way!""")

);

for (@queries) {
    my ($extracted, $remainder, $prefix) = extract_delimited(
        undef,      # defaults to $_
        '"',        # Our chosen delimiter
        '[^"]*',    # Allow for text before the delimiter
        '"');       # Escape delimiter when doubled
    
    # Strip the delimiter since Text::Balanced leaves it in
    $extracted =~ s/^\"(.*)\"$/$1/;
    
    print;
    print "\n\$prefix    = '$prefix'\n";
    print "\$extracted = '$extracted'\n";
    print "\$remainder = '$remainder'\n\n";
    
}
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QUERY = "SOME QUERY WITH "" (DOUBLE QUOTES)" YEEHA
$prefix    = 'QUERY = '
$extracted = 'SOME QUERY WITH "" (DOUBLE QUOTES)'
$remainder = ' YEEHA'

Johnson looked up and said "Pie is tasty!" People in Clarkstown liked 
+""Pie"".
$prefix    = 'Johnson looked up and said '
$extracted = 'Pie is tasty!'
$remainder = ' People in Clarkstown liked ""Pie"".'

"You sir are an ""A$@hole""!" The chipmunks were naturally shocked.
$prefix    = ''
$extracted = 'You sir are an ""A$@hole""!'
$remainder = ' The chipmunks were naturally shocked.'

"""No Way!""" """Way!"""
$prefix    = ''
$extracted = '""No Way!""'
$remainder = ' """Way!"""'
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$query  = qq("SOME QUERY WITH "" (DOUBLE QUOTES)" YEEHA);
$query =~ /"((?:[^"]|"")*)"(.*)/;
print "dollar one =$1\n\ndollar two = $2\n\n";
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