Are regular expressions worth the hassle?

Question

It strikes me that regular expressions are not understood well by the majority of developers. It also strikes me that for a lot of problems where regular expressions are use

Answer 1

Whenever i use a Regex i always try to leave a comment explaining exactly how it's structured because I agree with you that not all developers understand them and going back to a regex, even if you've written it yourself, can be a headache to understand again.

That said, they definitely have their uses. Try stripping out all html elements from a box of text without it!