split a string with quoted parts into list

[oliver]

hi there

i'm experimanting with imaplib and came across stringts like
    (\HasNoChildren) "." "INBOX.Sent Items"
in which the quotes are part of the string.

now i try to convert this into a list. assume the string is in the variable 
f, then i tried
    f.split()
but i end up with
    ['(\\HasNoChildren)', '"."', '"INBOX.Sent', 'Items"']
so due to the sapce in "Sent Items" its is sepearted in two entries, what i 
don't want.

is there another way to convert a string with quoted sub entries into a list 
of strings?

thanks a lot, olli