Why are people using regexp for email and other complex validation?

Question

There are a number of email regexp questions popping up here, and I\'m honestly baffled why people are using these insanely obtuse matching expressions rather than a very si

Answer 1

On factor: the set of people who understand how to write a regular expression is very much larger than the set of people who understand the formal constraints on regular languages. Same goes for non-regular "regular expressions".