Apparently Perl 6 will use verbose regular expressions (ie. extended whitespace mode) by default. If it's that highly thought of, then maybe it's time to consider using it too. Although I've never even considered it when writing my own code, I always wish that others would use it to make their code more understandable. This is especially the case since doing a bit more work in Python, where standardised, readable code-layout is enforced. As such, Five Habits for Successful Regular Expressions is highly recommended.