It really depends on the situation. For regex, certain things are much more understandable than a long set of loops for it, as long as the regex isn't too compl

It really depends on the situation. For regex, certain things are much more understandable than a long set of loops for it, as long as the regex isn't too complicated. Ditto for implicit for-loops for addition in say numpy or fortran 90. I've seen scientific codes in C that have like 5 to 6 order nested loops that end up being thousand+ of lines, after which the length requires much much more time reinternalizing after coming back months later, or worse, as someone who didn't write it, all due to the fact that the whole damn thing can't fit on a single page of emacs and be still legible.