title: Regular Expression Vs. String Parsing
body: <p>At the risk of open a can of worms and getting negative votes I find myself needing to ask,</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p><strong>When should I use Regular Expressions and when is it more appropriate to use String Parsing?</strong></p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>And I'm going to need <strong>examples</strong> and <strong>reasoning</strong> as to your stance. I'd like you to address things like <strong>readability</strong>, <strong>maintainability</strong>, <strong>scaling</strong>, and probably most of all <strong>performance</strong> in your answer.</p>
  
  <p>I found another question <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/357814/when-is-it-best-to-use-regular-expressions-over-basic-string-spliting-substrin">Here</a> that only had 1 answer that even bothered giving an example. I need more to understand this.</p>
  
  <p>I'm currently playing around in C++ but Regular Expressions are in almost every Higher Level language and I'd like to know how different languages use/ handle regular expressions also but that's more an after thought. </p>
  
  <p>Thanks for the help in understanding it!</p>
  
  <p>Edit: I'm still looking for more examples and talk on this but the response so far has been great. :)</p>