Python — check if a string contains Cyrillic characters

Question

How to check whether a string contains Cyrillic characters?

E.g.

>>> has_cyrillic('Hello, world!')
False
>>> has_cyrillic('Привет, world!')
True

Answer 1

You can use a regular expression to check if a string contains characters in the а-я, А-Я range:

import re 

def has_cyrillic(text):
    return bool(re.search('[а-яА-Я]', text))

---

Alternatively, you can match the whole Cyrillic script range:

def has_cyrillic(text):
    return bool(re.search('[\u0400-\u04FF]', text))

This will also match letters of the extended Cyrillic alphabet (e.g. ё, Є, ў).

Answer 2

regex supports Unicode properties, along with a few short forms.

>>> regex.search(r'\p{IsCyrillic}', 'Hello, world!')
>>> regex.search(r'\p{IsCyrillic}', 'Привет, world!')
<regex.Match object; span=(0, 1), match='П'>
>>> regex.search(r'\p{IsCyrillic}', 'Hello, wёrld!')
<regex.Match object; span=(8, 9), match='ё'>

Answer 3

Suggesting a method, faster than the discussed ones here.

Approach#1:

len("экономия3r4".encode("ascii", "ignore")) > len ("экономия3r4")

246 ns ± 7.76 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000000 loops each)

Would print "True" if there is a Cyrillic character

Approach#2:

Discussed in earlier post by Max

import re

def has_cyrillic(text):
    return bool(re.search('[а-яА-Я]', text))

has_cyrillic("экономия3r4")

929 ns ± 20.6 ns per loop (mean ± std. dev. of 7 runs, 1000000 loops each)

Answer 4

You could create a set containing the cyrillic letters and just check each character of the string:

cyrillic_letters = {....} # fill it with the cyrillic letters

def has_cyrillic(text):
    for c in text:
        if c in cyrillic_letters:
            return True
    return False