Because you were in the midst of a golfing match.

No, I wasn't. Read the thread carefully. I responded for my simple mechanism in response to a snippets posting. Part of that posting suggested that some of the original ideas might be good golfing, but that's not where I went with it.

So, if not golfing, then practice safe regex. {grin}

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker