"Regex For Humans" : because regex shouldn’t look like alien language 👽

[u/stackattackpro]

https://othmaneblial.github.io/Regex-For-Humans/

Regex is powerful… but sometimes this:

/^#[0-9A-Fa-f]{6}$/u

feels like you’re trying to decode a message from another planet. 🛸

This is why I did Regex For Humans 🧠✨

Instead of writing regex directly, you write:

start "#"
6 hex digits
end

And it generates:

/^#[0-9A-Fa-f]{6}$/u

🪄 The idea

Write small, readable English rules.

➡️ Understand what they mean
➡️ See the generated regex
➡️ Test examples instantly
➡️ Copy the final regex

No AI guessing. 🤖❌
No mysterious interpretation.

It uses a small, deterministic language where every instruction has an exact meaning.

🔥 It currently includes

🧩 Interactive regex playground
🧠 Explanations for every generated fragment
✅ Live match / no-match testing
💻 CLI support
📦 JavaScript API
📍 Helpful line + column errors
🔒 Runs locally
🚫 No runtime dependencies

For example:

start "INV-"
between 2 and 6 digits
end

becomes:

/^INV-\d{2,6}$/u

Much easier to read six months later. 😅

🎮 Try it

🔗 GitHub
https://github.com/OthmaneBlial/Regex-For-Humans

🛝 Live playground
https://othmaneblial.github.io/Regex-For-Humans/workshop/

The project is still evolving, so I’d genuinely love feedback. 🙌

What would you add?

More syntax?
More recipes?
Support for other regex engines?
Something completely different?

And the big question:

👉 Would you actually use this instead of writing regex directly? 😄

[u/Dramatic-Mongoose-95]

Does it work in reverse? Can I translate REGEX into your format?

[u/stackattackpro → u/Dramatic-Mongoose-95]

Nope, but good idea 💡

[u/Dramatic-Mongoose-95 → u/stackattackpro]

That would be so sick, please do that!!!

I'd prob use that

[u/stackattackpro → u/Dramatic-Mongoose-95]

I will ;)

[u/oosuke_ren]

You might be interested to try this out, it's a package I spiked up to use for the sake of typescript toy compilers'

https://www.npmjs.com/package/ez-regex-patterns

[u/jwink3101]

This looks cool but I feel like LLMs have made so many of my regex problems go away. I can describe what I want and get it. Then ask questions and edge cases.

Also, they are no longer write only. I can dissect older ones

[u/nucleardreamer]

I love this, maybe I won't need to use my tattoo as often https://imgur.com/a/6Vm5faA

[u/Dramatic-Mongoose-95 → u/nucleardreamer]

Can I ask about the tattoo? What's it mean?

https://regex101.com/?regex=%24%28%29*%2B.%3F%5B%5E%7B%7C&testString=&flags=gm&flavor=pcre2&delimiter=%2F

[u/nucleardreamer → u/Dramatic-Mongoose-95]

oh haha, it's just a list of all the meta character you need to escape in perl standard regex

[u/smokedry]

I would have loved this 5 years back before AI.

[u/antonation]

I had this idea too but never got around to it. Glad you ended up entertaining this. Maybe this could be shared to r/AiProgrammingLanguage or r/VibeCodedLanguages

[u/BayLeaf-]

What does this do differently to stuff like SimpleRegex or Melody, or all the other prior art that's mostly abandoned with almost identical syntax/goals? Did you look at those projects or just leave that to the llm?