
Ask HN: Why isn't there a widely accepted replacement for regular expressions? - mshenfield
They&#x27;re notoriously difficult to understand, and there have been lots of attempts to support alternatives that are more human readable (these examples include alternatives and Regex wrappers):<p>* https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;VerbalExpressions&#x2F;JSVerbalExpressions<p>* https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;Engelberg&#x2F;instaparse<p>* https:&#x2F;&#x2F;drup.github.io&#x2F;2016&#x2F;08&#x2F;12&#x2F;tyre&#x2F;
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PaulHoule
I think most people find them easy to understand compared to the alternative
of writing the code as a state machine or writing it without using a state
machine.

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stephenr
They _can_ be difficult to understand, particularly for inexperienced users.

That's more an indicator that the person should learn about regular
expressions than anything.

