php - How to match a quoted string with escaped quotes in it?

Question

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

Against this string:

"quote\_with\escaped"characters" more

It only matches until the ", although I've clearly defined as an escape character (and it matches \_ and \ fine...).

Answer 1

It works correctly if you flip the order of your two alternatives:

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

The problem is that otherwise the important character gets eaten up before it tries matching ". It worked before for \ and \_ only because both characters in either pair get matched by your [^"].