> Named captures means you don't have to count parentheses to figure out which group you want. I don't know whether it qualifies as cosmetic, but it sure is nic

> Named captures means you don't have to count parentheses to figure out which group you want. I don't know whether it qualifies as cosmetic, but it sure is nice. Agreed! (As a regex-heavy Perl hacker, I loved the day that they entered the language.) I didn't mean to minimise them; rather quite the opposite, to point out that they gave a great return essentially for free (compared to regexes that still have capturing groups, but without names), as opposed to look-behind, which (I think) can slow down a match dramatically.