use strict;
my $str = 'arg1=ABC arg2=123 arg3= arg4="consecutive spaces and \\"escaped quote\\" shall be preserved within quotes"';
my $regex = qr/"[^"\\]*(?:\\.[^"\\]*)*"(*SKIP)(*F)|\h+/mp;
my $subst = '$0\\n';
my $result = $str =~ s/$regex/$subst/rg;
print "The result of the substitution is' $result\n";
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for Perl, please visit: http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html