does it even matter it does what it does and who cares
I'm afraid it does matter. Good scripting practice should be encouraged, and that's not 'elitist' or anything: even if something "does what it does", it may not do it fast enough or clearly/cleanly enough. More importantly, even if in a specific case there is no perceivable difference between a good and a not-so-good solution, that doesn't mean that there would be no difference in similar cases in the future.
I used to post scripts without regex in it and people would post exactly what I wrote with regex in it
So? This is not a "use regex for everything or don't use it at all" situation. If somebody once told you "use a saw to cut that tree, not a knife", you wouldn't then use a saw to cut meat, bread etc would you? Perhaps you should be putting some more thought as to which cases warrant the use of regex and which don't.
