Thanks for the link. I found it amusing. This little part really tickled my soul:

Of course, Perl5 regexps are actually so complex that it's proven extremely difficult to write an interpeter for them. The Java classes implementing Perl5 regexps are about 7,000 lines of code, and if you look at java.util.regex.Pattern.java, you'll get a free peek into the Intern Project from Hell.

I mean, what do you say to a comment like this? "Too bad the PCRE/Python guys are smarter than the Java types?" or "Hmm, so Java is not a good language for implementing a regex engine in?", or should it just be "Use the force Luke, read the source.."?

Of course, the current blead sources for the regex engine, including only the two main C files comes to a whopping 13878 lines, (as of Patch 29100) so I guess the Java crew should be happy they managed to pare it down by half.... Although I do wonder how they managed to fit the regex optimiser into that amount of code.... Maybe really long lines? ;-)