OT: novice regular expression question

[It's me]

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.