I have never seen anyone argue for using regexp for "everything", but I see on a very regular basis people arguing they should apparently never be used for anything. Even the simplest of questions on StackOverflow get answered with the ever condescending, "what are you trying to do?" Followed by "now you have two problems." Followed by "use a parser." Followed by silence on how that specifically applies.
I called it a ludicrously contrived strawman because your proposed remedy to "just write a parser" is not any simpler of a task than the one you mocked up for regexp. There are still plenty of bugs you get to write and miss for several hours when you write any nontrivial software.
1. Nobody on HN is saying to never use a regexp 2. It's not a ludicrous example 3. A parser is not a ludicrous way to solve the above problem 4. It's not a straw man because it's not an irrelevant argument set up to be defeated, it is specifically an example of how EITHER using some simple functions OR a parser would be less problematic in practice than the gradual bit rot of erroneous use of the extremely powerful and unnecessary regular expression 5. The software becomes nontrivial when you complicate it with regular expressions 6. Where are these examples of people telling you never to use regular expressions 7. How is it you run into this on a very regular basis 8. If it's a simple question it probably has a simple answer and regular expressions are not simple as my example has shown 9. There's a reason this phrase is a truism and it doesn't need a mathematical proof to be accepted as a truism 10. Code however you want dude, it doesn't matter what a bunch of people on StackOverflow or any other website say except that 11. If a lot of people keep saying the same thing, there might, just might, be some merit to it.
