Matching a Unicode "name" with a JavaScript Regular Expression

Question

In JavaScript we can match individual Unicode codepoints or codepoint ranges by using the Unicode escape sequences, e.g.:

"A".match(/\u0041/) // => ["A"]
"B".match(/[\u0041-\u007A]/) // => ["B"]

But how could we create a regular expression to match a proper name which must include any Unicode "letter" using a JavaScript regular expression? Is there a range of letters? A special regex sequence or character class in JavaScript?

Say my website must validate names that could be in latin based languages as well as Hebrew, Cyrillic, Japanese (Katakana, Hiragana, etc.) is this feasible in JavaScript or is the only sane choice to delegate to a backend language with better Unicode support?

You may also want to read stackoverflow.com/questions/4323386/… and stackoverflow.com/questions/4718266/… — ninjalj
– ninjalj, Commented Apr 6, 2011 at 18:34
And kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/… and blog.jgc.org/2010/06/your-last-name-contains-invalid.html — ninjalj
– ninjalj, Commented Apr 6, 2011 at 18:46
I really think you should carefully consider your last choice: delegating the backend work to a language that actually supports The Unicode Standard. — tchrist
– tchrist, Commented Apr 7, 2011 at 12:10

MadBender · Accepted Answer · 2011-04-06 18:29:47Z

5

Here's a JS plugin that adds Unicode support to RegEx

http://xregexp.com/plugins/

answered Apr 6, 2011 at 18:29

MadBender

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Dmitrij Golubev · Accepted Answer · 2011-04-07 12:06:57Z

0

I am using for defining unicode of a symbols this site http://www.fileformat.info.

Unicode Blocks (Basic Latin, .+, Cyrillic, .+, Arabic and other): http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/block/index.htm

Unicode Character Categories (this does not work in JS): http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/category/index.htm

Letters (A-я): http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/a.htm

Fonts (which chars are supported in each font): http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/font/index.htm

Index for all above http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/index.htm

answered Apr 7, 2011 at 12:06

Dmitrij Golubev

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1 Comment

tchrist Over a year ago

You mustn’t use Unicode blocks as a proxy for Unicode scripts, which is what you really want. The Unicode Standard speaks to this matter specifically.

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