> So any attempt at improving this mess is welcome in my book. Already done, I think. :) 2. Not a big problem if the responsible programmer employs named capt

> So any attempt at improving this mess is welcome in my book. Already done, I think. :) 2. Not a big problem if the responsible programmer employs named captures and named subpatterns, and switches on extended mode and makes use of whitespace and comments. Like with any other programming environments, it's a matter of wanting to write readable code, and perhaps enforcing this through technical and social means. 3. I observe that Perl-style regex have become the de facto standard, in the sense that numerous programming languages in common use have adopted it, and preceding styles are marginalised to the point that any discussion about regex that does not mention the style makes the assumption of Perl-style. The next points are actually implementation dependent. It is not fair to condemn regex as a whole just because some implementations fall short. 4. Perl has good debugging tools for regex. 5. This is easy to express in Perl. 6. Non-capturing grouping exists. 7. Named subpatterns exist, interpolation of variables containing regex values exists.