Match anything between two " that is not a " except if it is escaped...

Hi everyone, I am struggling with regular expression trying to match strings delimited by double quotes, but taking into consideration that \" is not a string ending character. -------8<--------------------------------------------------------------- - $in = 'this is a string : "Hi everyone my name is \"Mathieu\"!" Here is a second string : "PHP is just perfect"'; // pattern for catching strings between " $pattern = '#"([^"]*)"#'; // surround matching string with HTML span code to highlight $replacement = '<b>"${1}"</b>'; // perform the reg exp replacement $out = preg_replace($pattern, $replacement, $in); -------8<--------------------------------------------------------------- - $out contains : this is a string : <b>"Hi everyone my name is \"</b>Mathieu\<b>"!"</b> Here is a second string : <b>"PHP is just perfect"</b> This behaviour is normal considering my pattern (anything between two " that is not a "). But I don't know how to get this : this is a string : <b>"Hi everyone my name is \"Mathieu\"!"</b> Here is a second string : <b>"PHP is just perfect"</b> I would like my pattern to express : Anything between two " that is not a " except if it is escaped. Thanks for reading me, any help in return is welcome ! -- Mathieu