[ben7799]

For sure, and one of the best uses of theory out in the real world is showing someone when their design can't be handled by regular expressions because they designed a non-finite state machine.

Just a weird thing that I have more than once had to do this in my career when someone dictated something had to be done with regular expressions when the requirements were for something that regular expressions were incapable of.

Generally a fight every time.. the people dictating regular expressions as the solution are picking it as a solution because they fundamentally don't understand the difference between finite/non-finite automata, mostly because there are way too many CS degree programs that award Bachelor's degrees without teaching undergrads what the difference is between a DFA, NFA, and a turing machine.