Since 5.1.0, three additional escape sequences to match generic character types are available when UTF-8 mode is selected. They are:
The property names represented by xx above are limited to the Unicode general category properties. Each character has exactly one such property, specified by a two-letter abbreviation. For compatibility with Perl, negation can be specified by including a circumflex between the opening brace and the property name. For example, \p{^Lu} is the same as \P{Lu}.
If only one letter is specified with \p or \P, it includes all the properties that start with that letter. In this case, in the absence of negation, the curly brackets in the escape sequence are optional; these two examples have the same effect:
C Other Cc Control Cf Format Cn Unassigned Co Private use Cs Surrogate L Letter Includes the following properties: Ll, Lm, Lo, Lt and Lu. Ll Lower case letter Lm Modifier letter Lo Other letter Lt Title case letter Lu Upper case letter M Mark Mc Spacing mark Me Enclosing mark Mn Non-spacing mark N Number Nd Decimal number Nl Letter number No Other number P Punctuation Pc Connector punctuation Pd Dash punctuation Pe Close punctuation Pf Final punctuation Pi Initial punctuation Po Other punctuation Ps Open punctuation S Symbol Sc Currency symbol Sk Modifier symbol Sm Mathematical symbol So Other symbol Includes emojis Z Separator Zl Line separator Zp Paragraph separator Zs Space separator
Extended properties such as InMusicalSymbols are not supported by PCRE.
Specifying case-insensitive (caseless) matching does not affect these escape sequences. For example, \p{Lu} always matches only upper case letters.
Sets of Unicode characters are defined as belonging to certain scripts. A character from one of these sets can be matched using a script name. For example:
\p{Greek}\P{Han}Those that are not part of an identified script are lumped together as Common. The current list of scripts is:
Arabic Armenian Avestan Balinese Bamum Batak Bengali Bopomofo Brahmi Braille Buginese Buhid Canadian_Aboriginal Carian Chakma Cham Cherokee Common Coptic Cuneiform Cypriot Cyrillic Deseret Devanagari Egyptian_Hieroglyphs Ethiopic Georgian Glagolitic Gothic Greek Gujarati Gurmukhi Han Hangul Hanunoo Hebrew Hiragana Imperial_Aramaic Inherited Inscriptional_Pahlavi Inscriptional_Parthian Javanese Kaithi Kannada Katakana Kayah_Li Kharoshthi Khmer Lao Latin Lepcha Limbu Linear_B Lisu Lycian Lydian Malayalam Mandaic Meetei_Mayek Meroitic_Cursive Meroitic_Hieroglyphs Miao Mongolian Myanmar New_Tai_Lue Nko Ogham Old_Italic Old_Persian Old_South_Arabian Old_Turkic Ol_Chiki Oriya Osmanya Phags_Pa Phoenician Rejang Runic Samaritan Saurashtra Sharada Shavian Sinhala Sora_Sompeng Sundanese Syloti_Nagri Syriac Tagalog Tagbanwa Tai_Le Tai_Tham Tai_Viet Takri Tamil Telugu Thaana Thai Tibetan Tifinagh Ugaritic Vai Yi
The \X escape matches a Unicode extended grapheme cluster. An extended grapheme cluster is one or more Unicode characters that combine to form a single glyph. In effect, this can be thought of as the Unicode equivalent of . as it will match one composed character, regardless of how many individual characters are actually used to render it.
In versions of PCRE older than 8.32 (which corresponds to PHP versions before 5.4.14 when using the bundled PCRE library), \X is equivalent to (?>\PM\pM*). That is, it matches a character without the "mark" property, followed by zero or more characters with the "mark" property, and treats the sequence as an atomic group (see below). Characters with the "mark" property are typically accents that affect the preceding character.
Matching characters by Unicode property is not fast, because PCRE has to search a structure that contains data for over fifteen thousand characters. That is why the traditional escape sequences such as \d and \w do not use Unicode properties in PCRE.
9 years ago
To select UTF-8 mode for the additional escape sequences (\p{xx}, \P{xx}, and \X) , use the "u" modifier (see http://php.net/manual/en/reference.pcre.pattern.modifiers.php).
I wondered why a German sharp S (ß) was marked as a control character by \p{Cc} and it took me a while to properly read the first sentence: "Since 5.1.0, three additional escape sequences to match generic character types are available when UTF-8 mode is selected. " :-$ and then to find out how to do so.
Steve ¶
2 years ago
Examples are always useful! See https://unicodeplus.com/category for more.
C Other
Cc Control (Unicode code points in the ranges U+0000-U+001F and U+007F-U+009F)
Cf Format (Soft hyphen (U+00AD), zero width space (U+200B), etc.)
Cn Unassigned (Any code point that is not in the Unicode table)
Co Private use
Cs Surrogate (Characters in the range U+D800 to U+DFFF, which are invalid in utf-8)
L Letter
Ll Lower case letter (a-z, µßàáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõöøùúûüýþÿ and more)
Lm Modifier letter (Letter-like characters that are usually combined with others, but here they stand alone:
ʰʱʲʳʴʵʶʷʸʹʺʻʼʽʾʿˀˁˆˇˈˉˊˋˌˍˎˏːˑˠˡˢˣˤˬˮʹͺՙ and more)
Lo Other letter (ªºƻǀǁǂǃʔ and many more ideographs and letters from unicase alphabets)
Lt Title case letter (DžLjNjDzᾈᾉᾊᾋᾌᾍᾎᾏᾘᾙᾚᾛᾜᾝᾞᾟᾨᾩᾪᾫᾬᾭᾮᾯᾼῌῼ)
Lu Upper case letter (A-Z, ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÐÑÒÓÔÕÖØÙÚÛÜÝÞ and more)
L& Ordinary letter (Any character that has the Lu, Ll, or Lt property)
M Mark
Mc Spacing mark (None in latin scripts)
Me Enclosing mark (Combining enclosing square (U+20DE) like in a⃞ , combining enclosing circle backslash (U+20E0) like in a⃠)
Mn Non-spacing mark (Combining diacritical marks U+0300-U+036f, like the accents on this letter a: áâãāa̅ăȧäảåa̋ǎa̍a̎ȁa̐ȃ)
N Number
Nd Decimal number (0123456789, ٠١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩ and digits in many other scripts.)
Nl Letter number (ⅠⅡⅢⅣⅤⅥⅦⅧⅨⅩⅪⅫⅬⅭⅮⅯⅰⅱⅲⅳⅴⅵⅶⅷⅸⅹⅺⅻⅼⅽⅾⅿ and some more)
No Other number (⁰¹²³⁴⁵⁶⁷⁸⁹ ₀₁₂₃₄₅₆₇₈₉ ½⅓⅔¼¾⅕⅖⅗⅘⅙⅚⅐⅛⅜⅝⅞⅑⅒ ①②③④⑤⑥⑦⑧⑨⑩⑪⑫⑬⑭⑮⑯⑰⑱⑲⑳, etc.)
P Punctuation
Pc Connector punctuation (_ underscore (U+005F), ‿ undertie U+203F, ⁀ character tie (U+2040), etc.)
Pd Dash punctuation (- hyphen-minus (U+002D), ‐ hyphen (U+2010), ‑ non-breaking hyphen (U+2011), ‒ figure dash (U+2012),
– en dash (U+2013), — em dash (U+2014), ― horizontal bar (U+2015), etc.)
Pe Close punctuation (right parenthesis, bracket, or brace: `)` (U+0029), `]` (U+005D), `}` (U+007D), etc.)
Pf Final punctuation (right quotation marks: » (U+00BB), ’ (U+2019), ” (U+201D), etc.)
Pi Initial punctuation (left quotation marks: « (U+00AB), ‘ (U+2018), “ (U+201C), etc.)
Po Other punctuation (!"#%&'*,./:;?@\¡§¶·¿)
Ps Open punctuation (left parenthesis, bracket, or brace: `(` (U+0028), `[` (U+005B), `{` (U+007B), etc.)
S Symbol
Sc Currency symbol ($¢£¤¥, ₠ ₡ ₢ ₣ ₤ ₥ ₦ ₧ ₨ ₩ ₪ ₫ € ₭ ₮ ₯ ₰ ₱ ₲ ₳ ₴ ₵ ₶ ₷ ₸ ₹ ₺ ₻ ₼ ₽ ₾ ₿ (U+20A0-U+20BF), etc.)
Sk Modifier symbol (Symbol-like characters that are usually combined with others, but here they stand alone:
^`¨¯´¸ and more)
Sm Mathematical symbol (+<=>|~¬±×÷϶ and many more)
So Other symbol (¦ broken bar (U+00A6), © copyright sign (U+00A9), ® registered sign (U+00AE), ° degree sign (U+00B0);
arrows, signs, emojis and many many more)
Z Separator
Zl Line separator (line separator (U+2028))
Zp Paragraph separator (paragraph separator (U+2029))
Zs Space separator (space, no-break space, en quad, em quad, en space, em space, figure space, thin space, hair space, etc.) o_shes01 at uni-muenster dot de ¶
14 years ago
For those who wonder: 'letter_titlecase' applies to digraphs/trigraphs, where capitalization involves only the first letter.
For example, there are three codepoints for the "LJ" digraph in Unicode:
(*) uppercase "LJ": U+01C7
(*) titlecase "Lj": U+01C8
(*) lowercase "lj": U+01C9
7 years ago
Not made clear in the top of page explanation, but these escaped character classes can be included within square brackets to make a broader character class. For example:
<?php preg_match( '/[\p{N}\p{L}]+/', $data ) ?>
Will match any combination of letters and numbers. suit at rebell dot at ¶
15 years ago
these properties are usualy only available if PCRE is compiled with "--enable-unicode-properties"
if you want to match any word but want to provide a fallback, you can do something like that:
<?php
if(@preg_match_all('/\p{L}+/u', $str, $arr) {
}
?>
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