Regular expressions are used for a variety of tasks but the one I see most often is input validation. Names, dates, numbers…we tend to use regular expressions for everything, even when we probably shouldn’t.
The most common syntax for checking alphabetic characters is A-z but what if the string contains accented characters? Characters like ğ and Ö will make the regex fail. That’s where we need to use Unicode property escapes to check for a broader letter format!
Let’s look at how we can use p{Letter} and the Unicode flag (u) to match both standard and accented characters:
// Single word
"Özil".match(/[p{Letter}]+/gu)
// Word with spaces
"Oğuzhan Özyakup".match(/[p{Letter}s]+/gu);
Using regular expressions to validate strings, especially names, is much more difficult than A-z+. Names and other strings can be very diverse — let’s not insult users by making them provide non-accented letters just to pass validation!
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