I need to create a text file format which holds strings.  The strings can
legally contain any ASCII character, so they must be encoded in some way.
C-style would be most convenient.  Some example records might be:

  ITEM foo="a string" bar="a string containing \"quotes\""
  ITEM baz="a string ending with a slosh: \\"
  ITEM qux="a string ending with a slosh and a quote: \\\""

Anyone know of a regexp that can find the limits of a string, and won't be
tripped up by combinations of escaped quotes and escaped sloshes?

My current effort is:
    /".*?(?<!\\)(\\\\)*"/
The idea is to find the nearest quote which is preceded by an even number
of sloshes (including 0).  Nice in theory, but unfortunately, it doesn't
seem to work.

Cheers

  perldoc -q comment

shows a regex with this chunk in it:

  "(\\.|[^"\\])*"

You can also write that as

  "[^"\\]*(?:\\.[^"\\]*)*"

See perldoc -q delimit

    "How can I split a [character] delimited string except when inside
    [character]? (Comma-separated files)"