[gwildor]

> most of my regex-fu entails building a regex relatively close to what I want and then repeatedly throwing it at a local instance of RegExper and test strings until I have something which accomplishes what I'm looking for it to do.

> I'd definitely fall outside the "true regex superheroes" category.

I think you just gave the definition of "true regex superhero". Best regex programmers I know have a similar workflow.