[theamk]

The regular expressions in Ruby, Perl and Python supported "extended syntax" for a long time (x flag). For an example, see the first first section http://www.perl.com/pub/2004/01/16/regexps.html (this is perl , ruby is very similar).

I think the article would be easier to read if all the regexes were in extended form, but I suppose that author is an expert regex user, so the examples were easy enough for him.

And finally, perl6 totally re-did text matching with "grammars" (https://docs.perl6.org/language/grammars.html) -- they use much more readable syntax, nameable groups, etc... It really is quite a wonderful thing, I with it was available in other languages.

[petercooper]

Not so much an expert, but I did Perl for 8 years before 13 years (so far) of Ruby so a lot of exposure(!) I've not been a fan of extended syntax but it might be worth me giving it a proper go and writing something up if it's helpful so thanks!