Match Accented Letters with Regular Expressions

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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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