Take the 2-minute tour ×  Often when I see regular expressions,
I only see a total mess of characters. Why does it have to be
this way?  I guess what I really want to know is: are there
alternatives to regular expressions that basically do the same
thing but are implemented in a human readable language?   Thanks
for all the great responses and inspiration!  I wanted to
highlight this particular link which shows how a (working)
alternative would look like, which may also be a good starting
point for learning or "simple" regex expressions. But you also
quickly get a feel for the verbosity tradeoff.  share|improve
this question I'm amazed. This question went from 0 to 1000
views in less than a day. It really pays off to phrase one's
questions somewhat controversial. :) ... anyway, thanks for all
the great answers, and inspiring me. –  steffenj Nov 5 '08 at
14:37 That's just because after everyone read ads from the
sponsors on the right, they returned to their regular
programming. –  Windows programmer Nov 5 '08