[awirth]

Interesting, I wasn't aware of the history.

Personally I make the distinction, but I've noticed many many people do not, hence the question.

[gbacon]

People without theoretical CS background probably think of regular expressions (or regexes for short) as just text-matching thingies that sometimes give you two problems and would look at you blankly if you mention the Chomsky hierarchy. When we don’t know there’s a distinction to be made, we go for economy of expression.