regex crate for Rust
The most recommended of 4 regex libraries
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.
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.
12 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 9
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 75%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 9 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Fast, strong performance
“the rust regex engine has really good performance when it comes to the constants too”
Comment from 25 Mar 2026 in “Ripgrep is faster than {grep, ag, Git grep, ucg, pt, sift}” “Finally, a demonstration of C-like speed”
Comment from 6 Jan 2026 in “C Is Best” De facto standard Rust library
“Rust's regex crate where the best third-party solution gets blessed into a first-party package”
Comment from 24 Feb 2026 in “What it means that Ubuntu is using Rust” “These aren't randos, these are all de-facto first party libraries.”
Comment from 21 Aug 2026 in “Malicious Rust Crate Arrayref Runs a Build-Time Payload” “the defacto standard regex library in Rust”
Comment from 24 Mar 2026 in “Ripgrep is faster than {grep, ag, Git grep, ucg, pt, sift}” Audited and well maintained
“The core packages (things like rand and regex) are pretty closely audited in practice”
Comment from 20 Aug 2026 in “Malicious Rust Crate Arrayref Runs a Build-Time Payload” “The top hundred are efficient, concise, well-maintained crates”
Comment from 20 Aug 2026 in “Malicious Rust Crate Arrayref Runs a Build-Time Payload”
Other regex libraries people recommend
The three most recommended other regex libraries, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| regex crate for RustThis page | 9 | 3 | 75% | 5 | — | — |
| PCRE | 6 | 4 | 60% | 5 | — | — |
| regex-utils | 5 | 0 | 100% | 3 | — | — |
| RE# regex engine | 5 | 1 | 83% | 1 | — | — |
What people said
14 of the 15 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“avoids the possibility of infinite loops by just dropping half the features of the language”
“Medium level: Regex (Rust crate)”
“Regex is absolutely not suitable for most use cases that I have come across.”
“These aren't randos, these are all de-facto first party libraries.”
“there are other modules that have far better replacements on PyPi too (re vs regex for example)”
“The top hundred are efficient, concise, well-maintained crates”
“The core packages (things like rand and regex) are pretty closely audited in practice”
“overengineered bloatware regex”
“deliberately puts a reasonable upper bound on worst-case time complexity”
“the rust regex engine has really good performance when it comes to the constants too”
“the defacto standard regex library in Rust”
“Rust's regex crate where the best third-party solution gets blessed into a first-party package”
“Finally, a demonstration of C-like speed”
“most people will just depend on it directly if they need that functionality”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.