Perma-win in the regular expression decipher game

My first real programming job as a freelance have involved a fair share of regular expressions, and I constantly found myself working on a mess that would only stay readable in my mind for a few minutes at a time. Once it left, I had to play the decipher game to get it back - wasting several minutes every time.

As I care about code readability, for the sake of maintenance and aesthetics, it troubled me. Especially because I know it doesn't have to be this hard. Simple solution emerge by thinking long and hard. I obviously hadn't thought long or hard enough.

Enter Mark Pilgrim, who comments every single step of his expression, syntax and intent included, to keep himself out of trouble. What an astonishingly simple solution.

Thanks Mark, I'm now free to blink and code regular expressions simultanously.