Apostrophes are killing me

[Asheeown]

I'm making this simple parser that has turned out to be not so simple.  Phrases/sentences are encased in apostrophes and parsed but when they CONTAIN apostrophes, slashes are added before it is parsed.

 

For example, if someone entered the sentence (It's a sunny day today.), the output would look like this:

 

'It\'s a sunny day outside'

 

I add the apostrophes manually on the outside to separate sentences but addslashes before that to escape any existing ones so far.  However, my expression below just doesn't cut it, and I can't figure out how to skip over any apostrophes that have the escape character in front of them.

 

$regex = "/'(.*?)'/";

[JAY6390]

/'(.*?)(?<!\\)'/

[Asheeown]

That regex sends back an empty array when using preg_match_all.  I tried with the example I posted as well and it's the same thing.

[JAY6390]

Oops you need to escape the escape character twice, like so

/'(.*?)(?<!\\\\)'/

[Asheeown]

Oops you need to escape the escape character twice, like so

/'(.*?)(?<!\\\\)'/

 

Works perfectly, thank you very much.

[JAY6390]

no problem