Regex for languages other than english

[Ricky Romaya]

Hi,

Anybody could show me a regex for capturing words (alphas, without
numerics) in languages other than english (languages with special
characters i.e. french, german)? I've tried '[a-zA-Z]+' but the special
letters for some language (i.e. french) are not captured. The '\w+' works
fine, but it also include numerics, which I don't want.

TIA

[John Dunlop]

Re: Regex for languages other than english

Ricky Romaya wrote:
[color=blue]
> Anybody could show me a regex for capturing words (alphas, without
> numerics) in languages other than english (languages with special
> characters i.e. french, german)? I've tried '[a-zA-Z]+' but the special
> letters for some language (i.e. french) are not captured. The '\w+' works
> fine, but it also include numerics, which I don't want.[/color]

You'd need to specify what characters you want individually
or, carefully, with a character range, as in [a-z].

--
Jock

[Ricky Romaya]

Re: Regex for languages other than english

John Dunlop <usenet+2004@jo hn.dunlop.name> wrote in
news:MPG.1c6d5b b090cb526f98983 5@News.Individu al.NET:
[color=blue]
>
> You'd need to specify what characters you want individually
> or, carefully, with a character range, as in [a-z].
>[/color]
Well, that much I know. The problem is in my native tongue, and english
(as 2nd language), there are no such special characters. My work requires
me to also include supports for other languages (such as french, german,
etc) which I can't speak, let alone write. I don't know the list of those
special characters and how to input them with ordinary 101 US keyboard.
Care to point me to a (internet) resource where the complete list of
those special characters are listed and how to input them?

BTW, as I said '\w+' works fine, except it also include numerics. Are
there ways to simulate '\w' without including the numerics, and without
knowing the list of all special characters?

TIA

[John Dunlop]

Re: Regex for languages other than english

Ricky Romaya wrote:
[color=blue]
> The problem is in my native tongue, and english (as 2nd language), there
> are no such special characters. My work requires me to also include supports
> for other languages (such as french, german, etc) which I can't speak, let
> alone write. I don't know the list of those special characters and how to
> input them with ordinary 101 US keyboard. Care to point me to a (internet)
> resource where the complete list of those special characters are listed[/color]

If it isn't English, then I'm afraid I'm not overly familiar
with it. I think, though you'd better check yourself, that
German is covered by the Latin-1 alphabet, lists of which
are abundant on the web; French I think, again I'm not sure,
uses a character or two, such as the oe ligature, which are
outside Latin-1.
[color=blue]
> and how to input them?[/color]

How you enter those special characters depends on your
system. On Windows I would press and hold down the Alt key
and type the character's position in the native character
set, in decimal, with a leading zero, on the numeric keypad,
not on the numbers above the letters. So to type the
character 'é' (SMALL LETTER E WITH ACUTE ACCENT), hold down
Alt and using the numeric keypad type 0233.

In PCREs, you can also enter characters indirectly, by way
of an escape notation: A backslash followed by the letter
'x' followed by the code position in hexadecimal (case
insensitive) of the character; e.g., \xE9 represents 'é'.
This works both inside and outside of character classes.

So the regular expressions `^[a-zA-Zé]+$` and `^[a-zA-
Z\xE9]+$` are equivalent, and can be extended to match other
special characters.
[color=blue]
> BTW, as I said '\w+' works fine, except it also include numerics. Are
> there ways to simulate '\w' without including the numerics, and without
> knowing the list of all special characters?[/color]

There is no PCRE metacharacter for that. Although you can
specify a character class that would simulate that, you'd
need to know what characters you want to include.

Maybe there's another way. PHP keeps on surprising me.

--
Jock

[R. Rajesh Jeba Anbiah]

Re: Regex for languages other than english

Ricky Romaya wrote:[color=blue]
> Hi,
>
> Anybody could show me a regex for capturing words (alphas, without
> numerics) in languages other than english (languages with special
> characters i.e. french, german)? I've tried '[a-zA-Z]+' but the[/color]
special[color=blue]
> letters for some language (i.e. french) are not captured. The '\w+'[/color]
works[color=blue]
> fine, but it also include numerics, which I don't want.[/color]

Use something like [\xc8-\xcb]+
<http://in2.php.net/manual/en/reference.pcre. pattern.syntax. php>

--
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