Exactly - 90% of the regular expressions you (or at least I) use in Perl are going to be fairly simple. They'll look like cryptic nonsense to someone who is not familiar with regexes, but be immediately obvious to someone who uses them often, and obvious with 40 seconds of looking at documentation to someone who is just familiar with them.
Regexes shouldn't, IMO, be removed or avoided in Perl - they're a crucial part of the language, and one of the reasons Perl is so good for what it's good for.
Same goes for slices in python. Just like how if you're using Perl, you need to become familiar with regular expressions, if you're using python, you need to become familiar with slicing, because it's a crucial part of the language, and you'll probably be writing a lot of "un-pythonic" code in python without them, as well as being utterly unable to read someones code who is familiar with them.
As far as palish's point about explicit and implicit
listb = lista[:]
is explicit, once you're familiar with the basic features of python, assuming you consider slicing a "basic feature" - I certainly do.
Regexes shouldn't, IMO, be removed or avoided in Perl - they're a crucial part of the language, and one of the reasons Perl is so good for what it's good for.
Same goes for slices in python. Just like how if you're using Perl, you need to become familiar with regular expressions, if you're using python, you need to become familiar with slicing, because it's a crucial part of the language, and you'll probably be writing a lot of "un-pythonic" code in python without them, as well as being utterly unable to read someones code who is familiar with them.
As far as palish's point about explicit and implicit
is explicit, once you're familiar with the basic features of python, assuming you consider slicing a "basic feature" - I certainly do.