Regex for quoted string with escaping quotes

/"(?:[^"\\]|\\.)*"/

Works in The Regex Coach and PCRE Workbench.

Example of test in JavaScript:

    var s = ' function(){ return " Is big \\"problem\\", \\no? "; }';
    var m = s.match(/"(?:[^"\\]|\\.)*"/);
    if (m != null)
        alert(m);

This one comes from nanorc.sample available in many linux distros. It is used for syntax highlighting of C style strings

\"(\\.|[^\"])*\"

As provided by ePharaoh, the answer is

/"([^"\\]*(\\.[^"\\]*)*)"/

To have the above apply to either single quoted or double quoted strings, use

/"([^"\\]*(\\.[^"\\]*)*)"|\'([^\'\\]*(\\.[^\'\\]*)*)\'/

Most of the solutions provided here use alternative repetition paths i.e. (A|B)*.

You may encounter stack overflows on large inputs since some pattern compiler implements this using recursion.

Java for instance: http://bugs.java.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6337993

Something like this: "(?:[^"\\]*(?:\\.)?)*", or the one provided by Guy Bedford will reduce the amount of parsing steps avoiding most stack overflows.

Regex for quoted string with escaping quotes

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