Really now. It's obviously veg.+ns: vegans and vegetarians.

I didn't get that either; not that obvious after all! I thought they were making a joke about vegan being a swear/taboo word, given the context of saying people don't want to hear of it because it allegedly threatens their morality

Oh aha thanks for pointing that out. Now that you mention it that does seem obvious. I definitely didn't catch that from the first use though. There should be a better word to capture both those meanings that doesn't confuse my poor regex sensibilities like that. :|

My regex sensitivities only warned me about the persecution of veggggggggns.

I was more concerned about the vens

It's a regular veganza in here. (I'm sorry)

veg(etari)?ans

I suppose I really should use veg.*ns