OT: novice regular expression question

From: It's me (itsme_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 12/30/04 

Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2004 17:18:56 GMT

I am never very good with regular expressions. My head always hurts
whenever I need to use it.

I need to read a data file and parse each data record. Each item on the
data record begins with either a string, or a list of strings. I searched
around and didn't see any existing Python packages that does that.
scanf.py, for instance, can do standard items but doesn't know about list.
So, I figure I might have to write a lex engine for it and of course I have
to deal wit RE again.

But I run into problem right from the start. To recognize a list, I need a
RE for the string:

1) begin with [" (left bracket followed by a double quote with zero or more
spaces in between)
2) followed by any characters until ] but only if that left bracket is not
preceeded by the escape character \.

So, I tried:

^\[[" "]*"[a-z,A-Z\,, ]*(\\\])*[a-z,A-Z\,, \"]*]

and tested with:

    ["This line\] works"]

but it fails with:

    ["This line fails"]

I would have thought that:

   (\\\])*

should work because it's zero or more incidence of the pattern \]

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Sorry for beign OT. I posted this question at the lex group and didn't get
any response. I figure may be somebody would know around here.

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