---
id: tree-sitter-regex
version: "0.25.0"
license: MIT
license_treatment: permissive
maintenance: aging
---

# tree-sitter-regex — Regex grammar for tree-sitter

License: permissive · Maintenance: aging · Downloads: 2.0M/mo

## What it is and what it does

tree-sitter-regex is a language grammar for tree-sitter that parses regular expressions according to PCRE2, POSIX, and JavaScript syntax standards. It enables incremental, syntax-aware parsing of regex patterns into an abstract syntax tree, which is useful for tools that need to analyze, validate, or transform regex code.

The package is a compiled extension (available as prebuilt wheels for multiple platforms) with no runtime dependencies beyond Python 3.10+. It's designed to be used as a grammar module within the tree-sitter ecosystem, typically loaded by tree-sitter bindings to provide regex parsing capabilities to higher-level applications.

Use it for:

- Regex linting or validation tools that need to parse and analyze regex patterns for correctness.
- Code editors or IDEs that highlight regex syntax and provide autocomplete for regex literals.
- Static analysis tools that extract and analyze regex patterns from source code.
- Regex refactoring or transformation tools that need to understand regex AST structure.

## Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts above — verify before relying.

Provides a tree-sitter grammar for parsing regular expressions in PCRE2, POSIX, and JavaScript syntaxes, enabling incremental parsing and syntax analysis of regex patterns.

Yes, if you are building a tool that needs to parse or analyze regular expressions and are already using tree-sitter. The package is well-maintained within its scope, permissively licensed, and has no external runtime dependencies. However, it is a specialized grammar module—install it only if you have a specific need for tree-sitter-based regex parsing; it is not a general-purpose regex library.

## Install

pip install tree-sitter-regex
uv add tree-sitter-regex
poetry add tree-sitter-regex

## Installing tree-sitter-regex

Before you install: Medium install friction due to compiled wheels; prebuilt binaries available for common platforms (macOS x86_64/arm64, Linux x86_64/aarch64, Windows x86_64/arm64). Maintenance status is aging—last release was 335 days ago, though the repository remains active with a recent commit on 2025-09-13.

License in practice: MIT license is permissive; you can use, modify, and distribute this package freely with minimal restrictions, making it suitable for both open-source and proprietary projects.

Quickstart:

pip install tree-sitter-regex

import tree_sitter_regex
# Use with tree-sitter to parse regex patterns
# Requires tree-sitter library and language binding setup

Requires Python 3.10 or later; tree-sitter core library and Python bindings must be installed separately to use this grammar.

Verify before relying:

- Whether this package is typically used standalone or always as a dependency of another tree-sitter wrapper.
- Performance characteristics and typical parse times for regex patterns of varying complexity.
- Specific version compatibility with tree-sitter core and tree-sitter-py bindings.

## Package facts

- License: MIT (permissive)
- Python support: supports_current
- Install friction: medium
- Maintenance: aging
- Downloads: 2.0M/month (top 5,000 on PyPI)
- Known vulnerabilities: none known

## Tags

tree-sitter regex grammar, regex parsing tree-sitter, incremental regex parser, PCRE2 POSIX JavaScript regex, regex syntax analysis, tree-sitter language binding, regex AST generation, parsing, tree-sitter, regex-grammar

[View on SkillFed](https://skillfed.io/packages/tree-sitter-regex) · [View on PyPI](https://pypi.org/project/tree-sitter-regex/)