To quote the first paragraph of Apocalypse 5:

This is the Apocalypse on Pattern Matching, generally having to do with what we call "regular expressions", which are only marginally related to real regular expressions. Nevertheless, the term has grown with the capabilities of our pattern matching engines, so I'm not going to try to fight linguistic necessity here. I will, however, generally call them "regexes" (or "regexen", when I'm in an Anglo-Saxon mood).

Two things can be learned from here. First, there's no reason to abandon the term "regular expression", or "regex" for short. It's a term people know and have been using for a long, long time. Second, there is a alternative term already, "Pattern Matching". A term used in the Camel-III, and predating the first efforts on perl6.

Abigail