[nurettin]

<input value="how about this? />"/>

[unlinkr]

That is a valid XHTML tag (if I remember correctly) and can be matched perfectly fine by a regex.

[nurettin]

Perhaps something like "([^"]*)" could skip what is inside the string literal. Unless there is "<input" in the string literal, then where you start parsing becomes very important.

[unlinkr]

That pattern would indeed match a quoted string. I don't see how it would matter if the quoted string contains something like "<input". It can contain anything except a quote character.

[nurettin]

It just makes the starting offset of the regex input important.

[unlinkr]

Sure. But that would be true for any parsing technique. No parser known to man would be able to produce a valid parse if you start it in the middle of a quoted string!