... I prefer more explicit code ... over regex-acrobatics ...

And, in general, so do I. However, I spent so much effort figuring out regexes and they offer so many bright doodads and shiny gewgaws that my first reaction to a question like the OP is "Hey, I should be able to do this (or do it better) with a regex like..." So I put together a regex and it works – sort of; and I see how I can fix it by putting in a positive look-ahead here; and that makes it better, but still not quite, but if I put in an alternation there...; oops, now it doesn't work at all; oh, I see, that should have been...; that's a lot better, but there's still this corner case... And so it goes. But in the end I learn a little more about regexes, which makes me a little more likely to turn to them in the future... This stuff isn't syntactic sugar, it's syntactic heroin!

In reply to Re^2: Replace the nth occurence by AnomalousMonk
in thread Replace the nth occurence by Anonymous Monk

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