So regexp is easy: the Lua authors assert that their irregular-regular expressions (match library) cover the 80% use case for regular expressions while maintain

So regexp is easy: the Lua authors assert that their irregular-regular expressions (match library) cover the 80% use case for regular expressions while maintaining excellent performance and avoiding the hell that regexps can all too easily descend into. Based on some of the regexps that I've come across in my time...I'm inclined to agree with their decision. As for unicode, I also rather like their approach: we give you the low level tools, and you are free to implement whatever sort of encoding support you like on top of that. I used Ruby 1.8 when a string was just a bucket-o-bytes, and now I use Ruby 1.9 where every string MUST HAVE AN ENCODING OR ELSE! Based on my experience with both, I'd much rather not have encoding forced on me. That said, it would be nice to see a unicode implementation "blessed" by the core team (but the seem loath to "bless" any libraries).