I think that's a very bad idea. Problems are not just regex or non-regex. Sometimes you can't decide if a question is a regex question or not. Lots of people ask for regexps to parse XML|HTML|CSV. (Update: to make this clear, this would be sort of like making a section for homework questions.) This would be worse if we had a section like that. But that's nor the most important problem.

We could just as well have sections for CGI questions (including templating, generic HTML|CSS|Javascript questions doing nothing to perl, etc), LWP|WWW::Mechanize questions, data structure questions (including how do I dereference this, or sort this by this key), XML questions, bioinformatics quesitions, module installing questions.

Don't you realize how this is orthogonal to the current division of sections? There are regex meditations, regex obfus, cool uses of regex, regexp snippets, regex poetry, reviews of regex modules and regex books. If you continue this, we would get a large matrix of sections.

C.

A "no" vote from me.

People already have trouble figuring out where to post -- adding another section is just going to add to their confusion.

While I completely understand the OP's desire to "compartmentalize [his] reading", I am inclined to vote "no." Many questions (including one of my first) look like regex questions to the one doing the asking, but have better non-regex solutions. (I might still be banging my head on certain questions if alternate ways of looking at things had not been proposed.)

Those better solutions may never be offered up if the question is pre-categorized as a regex one. This wastes valuable opportunities for both mentors and learners, IMHO.

OTOH, I am very much looking forward to new, clever uses for the Keyword Nodelet...

Per the theme,

• The Regex Codex
• The Regex Abbey
• Ark of the Regex
• The Cloister of Regular Expressions

Or following on from the usual queries: Regex Crypt
just another cpan module author

The Bad side

The bad side that I see, as others have pointed out, is that someone may pose a pure regex question, when they should actually be asking a more general question. A simple example would be something like why doesn't this regex match this deeply nested xml fragment - In this case someone could easily recognise the real problem, move the node and point the monk to XML::Twig or similar. Not all non-re questions would be as easily identified though, and people might just hedge their bets in phrasing questions thus removing the benefit of having an re specific area.

The Good side

On the other hand, a big plus that I see is that a regex specific area would be relevant to non-Perl people. I can envision regex.perlmonks.org becomming the defacto place for all regex QA, thus helping raise the profile of perlmonks and Perl (which nicely segues to the node: "Popularity of Perl vs. availability of Perl developers").

On balance I think it's worth a try. If it turns out to be a bad idea, all the nodes can just be re-homed into SoPW and the area removed.