Okay, I'm using PERL when I can, because it makes the job. I like how it is not distracting my train of thoughts when tackling a problem and how it makes scripts that are easy to hack later on. I love how it integrated regular expressions, but so far, I wasn't fond of how I had to test input patterns one after another with stripped down versions of the regular expression to find why it was failing.

And today I discover use re 'debug'.

With a simple line, I can get an overview of what the regular expression evaluator is trying to do when parsing a string (coloring added manually).
In yellow, we can track the position within the string: how much has been accepted so far. In green, a quick overview of what was just behind that position and what is just ahead. The blue code seems to identify the next operation that the regexp will do -- its program counter, sort of, and in white the detail of what is tried/done.

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