"Easy to write, hard to read". Perl's influence on Regex shows. Which is fine in most cases.
I always wonder what regexes would look like if they were derived from Python instead.
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Actually, regex syntax isn't primarily a Perl invention. Regexes as software tools go back to early Unix text processing tools (ed and grep, according to Wikipedia), and Perl took the syntax from those tools.
It is true that Perl reformed the syntax in important ways (to the better, if you ask me), and later on extended it a lot, but it's certainly not a Perl invention.