“sorry to disappoint you, Timmy, but the tooth fairy only comes once she knows the parents are aware their child is about to get some money/a visit”

I’m very surprised there are parents telling their kids about the tooth fairy that can’t recover the story when confronted by their kid with such evidence.

I agree with these “inverse” laws as enumerated, and agree with the reasoning given for them. However, how do we enact them? It seems to me that, currently, the incentives are heavily aligned towards the opposite of these three “laws”.

Turns out we’re both off the mark: it’s catastrophic backtracking that is “dangerously” vulnerable to performance issues. Something as simple as (a+)+b is enough to trigger the “bad” behavior. I assume you can achieve it with back references and lookarounds as well.

This video gives a good breakdown of what exactly is going on inside a compiled regex automata that encodes such a case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gITmP0IWff0

Backreferences are bad for performance and make the grammar being matched irregular, if I remember my comp sci classes. I don’t they should be taught in a Regex 101 class.