Match – A pattern matching language that replaces regex

Name: Match – A pattern matching language that replaces regex
Availability: InStock
Author: hollowsolve

by hollowsolve·Feb 25, 2026·3 points·0 comments

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AI Analysis

●●●BangerBig BrainNiche GemSolve My Problem

Regex alternative with parse trees and zero backtracking; niche but genuinely better.

Strengths

•No ReDoS by design eliminates entire class of regex performance bugs; provably safer than regex
•Readable grammar (e.g., 'one or more letters') beats `[a-z]+` noise; parse trees give named extractions without lookahead hacks
•~15KB zero-dependency implementation proves concept is lean, not boilerplate

Weaknesses

•Pattern matching has limited competition but regex remains dominant; ecosystem lock-in matters for tools
•No evidence of real-world adoption (GitHub link shows basic repo, no examples of production use)

Post Description

I built Match, a pattern matching language designed to replace regex. Instead of cryptic escape sequences, you describe patterns in plain English.

Example — matching an email address:

email: username then "@" then domain

username: one or more of (letter, digit, ".", "_", "-")

domain: one or more of (letter, digit, "-") then "." then between 2 and 6 letters

Key differences from regex:

- Human-readable grammar syntax - Full parse trees with named extractions - No backtracking, no ReDoS by design - Composable grammar modules (use "module" (rule1, rule2)) - Zero dependencies, ~15KB

Available on npm (@hollowsolve/match). Docs, playground, and examples on the site.

GitHub: https://github.com/hollowsolve/Match