find quoted string within a string (more of a regex question, though ..)

Howdy, Thanks for the answers on my previous question, though it hasn't resulted in a quicker dirparsing.. Anyway, here's a next one. For my own reasons (can explain, would take long, won't till sbody asks) I want to match a quoted string within a string. That is somehow kind of easy, I know ... if it weren't for the slashing of quotes. I've set up a regex that will nearly do the trick and now I'm looking for an enhancement (or replacement) that will work in all cases. Here's the code I use: <?php $str = "the quick \"brown fox ' jumps \' over \\\\\"the ' lazy \"dog"; print "Test String: $str\n"; $regex = '/( ([\'"]) .*? ( (?<!\\\\) \\2) )/x'; print "Regex to use: $regex\n"; preg_match($regex, $str, $m); print_r($m); ?> (x modifier allows whitespaces in the regex). When run, it produces the following output: [output] Test String: the quick "brown fox ' jumps \' over \\"the ' lazy "dog Regex to use: /( (['"]) .*? ( (?<!\\) \2) )/x Array ( [0] => "brown fox ' jumps \' over \\"the ' lazy " [1] => "brown fox ' jumps \' over \\"the ' lazy " [2] => " [3] => " ) [/output] basically, I think that I'll need to change the assertion (?<!\\) to match only odd numbers of slashes - but I don't know how to do it. Who does? Thanks, Wouter