> I think they're great though, if you take the time to understand them.
Regular expression is useful for sure. What is terrible is that every language, shell and platform has different "styles and implementation". On windows, cmd, powershell, C#, sql server, etc all have their own styles. It's similar enough and at the same time different enough to drive you insane. Throw in linux with their shells, vi(m), perl, etc all using their own variants.
But the biggest problem is that regex is prone to "set it and forget it" issue. It's something we use once in a while and forget. Was it brackets or parentheses or braces for defining character ranges? Does . or + signify one or more? And ever try deciphering someone's undocumented multiline regex? Fun times.
Regular expression is useful for sure. What is terrible is that every language, shell and platform has different "styles and implementation". On windows, cmd, powershell, C#, sql server, etc all have their own styles. It's similar enough and at the same time different enough to drive you insane. Throw in linux with their shells, vi(m), perl, etc all using their own variants.
But the biggest problem is that regex is prone to "set it and forget it" issue. It's something we use once in a while and forget. Was it brackets or parentheses or braces for defining character ranges? Does . or + signify one or more? And ever try deciphering someone's undocumented multiline regex? Fun times.