Actually, they are not interchangeable: the latter loses the "ordered items" assumption. Observe what they do with 2) bar 3) asfgh 7) lorem 6) ipsum 1) foo 5) baz 4) blah

I tried fixing that using \G, but didn't come up with anything useful in 5 minutes and gave up since it would have been a lot more complicated than your first regex which I believe is just perfect.

japhy: I like the scenario presented here. This is a regex (series) I'd propose you pick up; it's simple in premise and not far from something one might actually have to do one day, and it's not hard even for a novice to follow along on the subleties in the differences of each approach. A perfect teaching example, if you ask me.

Makeshifts last the longest.