>
> regexps fall directly into this chasm of "cleverness", especially when
> "humans" have to come back years, months, days [heck, even hours] later to
> "figure out what they wrote and why it works (or not)"
>

I think that it's more a matter of learning the language.  For example,

Ty så älskade Gud världen, att han utgav sin enfödde Son, på det att var och en
som tror på honom skall icke förgås, utan hava evigt liv.

is a bit hard for some of us to read (and for most of us to understand :-),
but if you knew the language, it would make more sense.  (I was going to post
the Thai verison, but it's unlikely that most would even have the character
set available :-).

Regexen are much the same.  I'll agree that they look confusing to the
newcomer, but to someone who knows Perl, most (definitely not all :-) of them
read pretty clearly.

> [unless someone is clever enough to write a
> regexp-to-human-readable-AND-BACK conversion program... ;) ]

If someone were to write such a thing, it would probably depend heavily on
regexen :-).

Ted

P.S.  The quote is John 3:16 in Swedish.
--
Ted Ashton ([log in to unmask]), Info Sys, Southern Adventist University
          ==========================================================
There are no deep theorems -- only theorems that we have not understood very
well.
                                        -- Goodman, Nicholas P.
          ==========================================================
         Deep thoughts to be found at http://www.southern.edu/~ashted