The terseness of regex isn't about speed-of-typing but ease-of-reading. Once you get used to the syntax, you can pattern match in your head pretty easily (for

The terseness of regex isn't about speed-of-typing but ease-of-reading. Once you get used to the syntax, you can pattern match in your head pretty easily (for any non-insane use of regex). Pattern matching with a verbose syntax that is "easy to ready" has been done hundreds of times but it rarely translates into "easy to read" for anyone familiar with regular expressions.