How to match the character class [:alpha:] in JavaScript

Question

I need to match all alphabetic characters (not only [a-zA-Z], but really all of them including ö, ß, â, ç, Æ, Å, Ĺ, Ĩ, Ÿ, Ș, њ, ѝ, Ц, ت, ר). In other programming languages there is character class named [:alpha:] for this, because it is virtually impossible to name all alpha characters from all alphabets in brackets.

\w doesn't help because it includes digits and underscore. I need letters only without digits, punctuation, spaces.

I recommend to have look at [Javascript + Unicode regexes](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/280712/javascript-unicode-regexes) — Felix Kling, Jan 25 '15 at 17:42
Related: [javascript regex posix character class?](https://stackoverflow.com/q/31280913/991073), and answer is no. — 把友情留在无盐, Jan 06 '20 at 11:40

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 25 '15 at 17:45

4

If you can use XRegExp, use. It has support for Unicode. Otherwise you have to enumerate the ranges yourself.

answered Jan 25 '15 at 17:45

phadej

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So actually, I haven't missed anything, current JavaScript is plain unable to to it without additional libraries or enumerating lots of Unicodes. – Holger Jakobs Jan 26 '15 at 14:57

How to match the character class [:alpha:] in JavaScript

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