[catlifeonmars]

> That said, what this regex wanted to be was obviously just a list. AWS should offer simpler abstractions (like lists) where they make sense.

Agree. I would understand if there was some obvious advantage here, but it doesn’t really seem like there is a dimension here where regex has an advantage over a list. It’s (1) harder to implement, (2) harder to review, (3) much harder to test comprehensively, (4) harder for users to use (correctly/safely).

[twoodfin]

Presumably the advantage was ease and speed of developing the filtering feature.

Wrong tradeoff, to be sure.