Replace double quotes not surrounded by single quotes

Question

I want to replace double quotes with single quotes if they aren't surrounded by single qoutes using PCRE. Some examples, the meaning is input => output

"foo" => 'foo'
'foo' => 'foo'
abc "foo" => abc 'foo'
foo "bar", "baz" => foo 'bar', 'baz'
abc 'foo "bar" baz' => abc 'foo "bar" baz'

I tried ^([^'"]*)"([^'"]*)" with the modifiers m multi-line and 'g global`. This works as far as there isn't more than one "xyz" block per line (fails in line 4).

EDIT: I forgot to mention that my current substitution is $1'$2'

Try [`'[^']*'(*SKIP)(*F)|"`](https://regex101.com/r/rR1mA2/1) — Wiktor Stribiżew, Jul 28 '16 at 13:36
@WiktorStribiżew: Great, thank you very much. This works like a charm — Andy, Jul 28 '16 at 13:42
The solution will only work in case input strings have no escape sequences. Can there be escaped single quotes to be aware of? — Wiktor Stribiżew, Jul 28 '16 at 13:54

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:08

The solution below will only work in case input strings have no escape sequences:

/'[^']*'(*SKIP)(*F)|"/

See the regex demo

'[^']*' - match a single quote, 0+ chars other than a single quote and a single quote again
(*SKIP)(*F) - PCRE verb sequence discarding the match and proceeding from the current index (you can read more on that at How do (*SKIP) or (*F) work on regex? SO post)
| - or...
" - a double quote.

In case there are escape sequences, you need to write a parser.

Replace double quotes not surrounded by single quotes

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