> Code smell is usually used to describe code that is suspicious or uses practices that are known to be highly unreliable (e.g. regex)

I think this sentence illustrates very well the root of our disagreement.

Saying "are well known to be highly unreliable" without any backing _facts_ is the sad state of affairs in IT industry.

I am keen to see a research done with scientific rigour that would show that regex is highly unreliable.