Raku rules
regular expression, string matching and general-purpose parsing facility of Raku
Raku rules are the regular expression, string matching and general-purpose parsing facility of the Raku programming language, and are a core part of the language. Since Perl's pattern-matching constructs have exceeded the capabilities of formal regular expressions for some time, Raku documentation refers to them exclusively as regexes, distancing the term from the formal definition.
Raku provides a superset of Perl 5 features with respect to regexes, folding them into a larger framework called rules, which provide the capabilities of a parsing expression grammar, as well as acting as a closure with respect to their lexical scope. Rules are introduced with the rule keyword, which has a usage quite similar to subroutine definitions. Anonymous rules can be introduced with the regex (or rx) keyword, or simply be used inline as regexes were in Perl 5 via the m (matching) or s (substitution) operators.
History
In Apocalypse 5, a document outlining the preliminary design decisions for Raku pattern matching, Larry Wall enumerated 20 problems with the "current regex culture". Among these were that Perl's regexes were "too compact and 'cute'", had "too much reliance on too few metacharacters", "little support for named captures", "little support for grammars", and "poor integration with 'real' language".
Between late 2004 and mid-2005, a compiler for Raku style rules was developed for the Parrot virtual machine called Parrot Grammar Engine (PGE), which was later renamed to the more generic Parser Grammar Engine. PGE is a combination of runtime and compiler for Raku style grammars that allows any parrot-based compiler to use these tools for parsing, and also to provide rules to their runtimes.
Among other Raku features, support for named captures was added to Perl 5.10 in 2007.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Raku rules” is regular expression, string matching and general-purpose parsing facility of Raku. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Raku, rules and regular, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “regular expression, string matching and general-purpose parsing facility of Raku” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 30, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7169108. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2004, 2005 and 2007.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Raku rules” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.