Why does Visual Studio use such a strange regex syntax

Question

Is there any reason why Visual Studio uses such a strange syntax (for instance in the search/replace dialog)?

Instead of writing \\s*(\\w+) = new Process\\(\\)

Answer 1

Well, they tried to make it "easier" to use, it seems, for a C++ coder.

Consider they provided new non-standard expressions, like

C/C++ Identifier
:i
Matches the expression ([a-zA-Z_$][a-zA-Z0-9_$]*)

Quoted string
:q
Matches the expression (("[^"]*")|('[^']*')).

I think the reason it has completely different syntax is so the regex user clearly sees its non-standard and not the same as normal regex.

Which is good. All in all its a good regex engine and easy to use.