simple RE?. if u answer, then i donate $1 to ...

[BA]

hello and thanks for reading this.
if you can answer this simple question i will put $1 into the poor kids fund
at my local quickcheck grocery store
i am new to python and re but a long time vb programmer.
i see the amazing potential power in re but it is a bit confusing.
i own two python books and i am still a litttle confused???

the concept is that i do not care if there is leading white space or not. i
do care that the first non-white space character is NOT a single quote. i am
trying to write a simple parser for m$-visual basic source code and a
leading single quote means a comment.
if you know of a python based parser for vb code, please let me know.
anyhoo,

the following are the patterns i have tried:
    pat_oe_ok1=r"^[^']\s*Option Explicit"
    pat_oe_ok2=r"^\s*[^']\s*Option Explicit"

the following are examples of strings that should fail the match. the
failure is based on the fact the single quote must not precede the Option
Explict string. i do not care about white space before or  after the first
single quote. after the Option Explict there must be a space or end-of-line
terminator.
    line_oe_nok1="'Option Explicit 'hello"
    line_oe_nok2="' Option Explicit 'hello"
    line_oe_nok3=" 'Option Explicit 'hello"
    line_oe_nok4=" '  Option Explicit 'hello"
    line_oe_nok5=" '  Option Explicitz 'hello"
    line_oe_nok6=" '  Option Explicitz 'hello"

the following are strings that should pass the match:
    line_oe_ok1="  Option Explicit 'hello"
    line_oe_ok2="Option Explicit "
    line_oe_ok2="Option Explicit"

the following are a couple of the many patterns i have tried:
    pat_oe_ok1=r"^[^']\s*Option Explicit" #ok: Option Explict
    pat_oe_ok2=r"^\s*[^']\s*Option Explicit" #ok: Option Explict

the re pattern i am using will only matcth
line_oe_ok1
and will fail to match
line_oe_ok2

the code line is:

    topline=line_oe_ok2
    m=re.search(pat,topline)
    if m:
        return 1
    else:
        return 0

what am i doing wrong?
thanks,
dave