# regex crate for Rust

9 Hacker News commenters recommended regex crate for Rust and 3 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 5 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Widely treated as the standard Rust regex library, praised for speed and bounded worst-case time. Critics say it drops language features to avoid infinite loops.

## Why people recommend it

- Fast, strong performance (2 comments): "the rust regex engine has really good performance when it comes to the constants too" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47519761)) "Finally, a demonstration of C-like speed" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46513793))
- De facto standard Rust library (3 comments): "Rust's regex crate where the best third-party solution gets blessed into a first-party package" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47133862)) "These aren't randos, these are all de-facto first party libraries." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49383227)) "the defacto standard regex library in Rust" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47504537))
- Audited and well maintained (2 comments): "The core packages (things like rand and regex) are pretty closely audited in practice" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49375267)) "The top hundred are efficient, concise, well-maintained crates" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49378056))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [PCRE](https://hackerapproved.com/p/pcre.md): 6 recommend
- [regex-utils](https://hackerapproved.com/p/regex-utils.md): 5 recommend
- [RE# regex engine](https://hackerapproved.com/p/re-sharp-regex-engine.md): 5 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "regex crate for Rust", https://hackerapproved.com/p/regex/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).