Remember, he's using the Lacanian / Zizekian definitions of terms, which are a lot different and more nuanced than their ordinary definitions, so you're probably the "good kind of sadist". ;) Lacan ironically classifies Marquis de Sade as a masochist!

From the extended paper:

https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/vulk-blog/ThePervertsGuid...

Pervert, in the Lacanian definition, actually means a person who enjoys being a vessel of the rules. Zizek identifies the method of discourse that the psychoanalyst uses as the pervert’s discourse, because the analyst sits in the position of the object of desire for the hystericized subject. This means that the analysand [the person being analyzed] projects their ideals onto the analyst during a process of questioning known as transference. When we use analysis to determine why we use a programming language, we are operating in the analyst's discourse. It is important to have a basic understanding of Lacan’s terms (such as perversion) in order to understand the cultural critiques of Slavoj Zizek and other Lacanians.

“Thus, in psychoanalysis "perversion" is not a derogatory term, used to stigmatize people for engaging in sexual behaviors different from the "norm."”, Bruce Fink. A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique (Kindle Locations 2460-2461). Kindle Edition.

“The Other's desire or will is accepted by the masochist instead of the law, in place of the law, in the absence of the law. As Lacan mentions, the Marquis de Sade (better known as a sadist, but in this instance manifesting decidedly masochistic tendencies) pushes his mother-in-law, Madame de Montreuil, to the point where she expresses her will that Sade be punished. It is her desire or will that has to serve Sade as a law. Not the law, but a law.”, Bruce Fink. A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique (Kindle Locations 2805-2808). Kindle Edition.

> sadism would definitely be a new development

I guess that might depend upon your regexps and how gnarly/undocumented they are :-)

Was it not perl that introduced the documentation feature to regexp (the extended "x" flag)?

I think Perl got it in 99 or 2000. The only other two possibilities are Ruby or PCRE. But I think they were following Perl rather than leading at that time.

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Raku's reinvention of regexes threw away the x flag. Instead comments are always supported. And whitespace is insignificant.

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Except when one explicitly asks for it to implicitly be significant. Imo this simple maneuver is shockingly sweet, the sort of thing I'm glad Larry Wall saw, with his usual piercing clarity, is brain-dead obviously precisely the right thing to do:

    rule declaration { <declarator> <name> '=' <value> }

The above declares a `rule` which is like a regex except it doesn't backtrack between atoms, and, if there's whitespace between atoms, it treats that as a tokenizing boundary. So, for example, whitespace can appear in the input where it appears in the pattern, and tokens corresponding to the atoms (`declarator`, `<name>`, etc.) can't run into each other unless one is comprised of alphanumerics and the other non-alphanumerics. This is precisely how humans expect things to work; `let foo` must have a space between `let` and `foo`, but `let foo=42` is OK because `=` is a non-alphanumeric. Simple. Sweet.

Me too, but I'm also a hysterical fetishist. So the more programming languages you use the more insane you get! Seems pretty accurate ;-)