The problem isn't with the surface syntax of HTML. Anything else, like S-expressions or JSON or whatever would have the same problem. The problem is arbitrary n

The problem isn't with the surface syntax of HTML. Anything else, like S-expressions or JSON or whatever would have the same problem. The problem is arbitrary nesting of elements. No language with nesting can be parsed with regex (modulo various copouts mentioned elsethread). But such nesting is useful and necessary for a document language like HTML. This goal is important; "we must be able to use awk" isn't.