Pray tell us, why are comma's or hashes easier to read than forward slashes, especially considering that forward slashes are most commenly used as delimiters, while commas and hashes usually play another role?

Abigail

As you know, "LTS" or "Leaning Toothpick Syndrome" does not always have to involve the use of the '\' character to escape the presence of another '/' character. Seeing '/\/\/\' is also an example of LTS.

Using another delimiter makes the code more readable, and is recommended by many top perl programmers (and is also covered in perlfaq, perlretut and in japhy's book).

They are easier to read, because I don't have to visually and mentally separate what the content between the substitution means before I can decipher what the substituion does.

Are we not here to teach others, and share that knowledge we've learned with others who may not yet have the experience?

TMTOWTDI

Are we not here to teach others, and share that knowledge we've learned with others who may not yet have the experience?

Which is exactly why I objected to the reasoning that lead to suggesting another delimiter. It's a good thing to be consistent, and use standards, be them mandatory, de facto, or evolved. It's also good to deviate from the standard if there are good reasons for it. It's not good to pretend that subjective reasons are authoritive. I don't care if someone prefers using hashes or commas over forward slashes when delimiting regexes that don't use forward slashes themselves. But I do object by suggesting the use of a de facto standard obfuscates.

Abigail

Maybe the poster has a pathlogical issue with slashes, maybe commas are like prozac to them. Perhaps they were viciously harrangued by a maruading horde of forward slashes on their way to kindergarten one day.

Seriously though, I didn't say it was easier to read but that perhaps that was what the poster was getting at.