No. I simply try to develop coding habits that make the inherently unpredictable nature of the future less error-prone and less fraught. Basing those habits on repeated patterns of behaviour and outcome I have identified from observing the past.

I'm sure you're right. But you seem to be berating me for something I neither suggested nor advocate.

It didn't prefer the regex solution because it was already more generalized; I preferred it because it was more descriptive (to me), less error-prone (for me), and easier to rework or enhance (by me) should that eventually become necessary.

And I definitely wasn't suggesting premature optimization. After all, I'm not the one who would:

...willingly and knowingly trade the near 3 orders of magnitude performance gain for that task now, against any potential savings against potential future maintenance costs.

;-)

I was merely saying that I believe that code maintainability is generally more important than code performance. Which is why I still prefer the regex-based solution, even through it's three orders of magnitude slower.

I doubt we're ever going to agree on this...which is fine. But I'm certainly not going to apologize for making maintainability my own higher priority, nor for advocating it as a priority for most developers.