Comment by apocalypstyx

On a tangentially related note, more and more I find myself wishing regex syntax wasn't such a hodgepodge of literal/non-literal characters. It always seems to end up in a mess of what is and isn't escaped and knowing what needs to be in which context. And I keep thinking we really only need one special character, namely '\', to prefix all non-literals. So \\ produces '\', \. is dot match, \* is star match, etc. So instead of: .foo* we have \.foo\*, which admittedly is going to end up more verbose in most situations, but still strikes me as clearer as to what's intended.