| name | unicode |
| description | Reference for Unicode character hex ranges and regex blocks for searching, matching, or filtering text across international scripts and symbols. |
| license | MIT |
Unicode Regex Ranges
WHEN TO USE
- You need to search, match, or filter text containing specific Unicode ranges (e.g., CJK, Cyrillic, Emoji).
- You are writing regex to validate or extract international characters, symbols, or specific scripts.
- You need a reference for exact hexadecimal ranges for various languages or symbols.
WHEN NOT TO USE
- Simple ASCII string matching where standard regex bounds (
[a-zA-Z]) are sufficient.
- Language translation or natural language processing tasks (regex only identifies character classes, not semantic meaning).
- Environment setups where Unicode regex support is severely limited or disabled.
Core Process
When tasked with matching specific languages or symbols:
- Identify the target script, language, or symbol category.
- Look up the precise hex range (
\x{XXXX}-\x{YYYY}) in the reference tables below.
- Insert the range into your tool's regex syntax (e.g.,
[\x{0100}-\x{024F}]+ for PCRE-compliant engines like rg or grep -P).
Core Principles
- Engine Compatibility: The ranges provided use
\x{XXXX} syntax, which is standard in PCRE (e.g., ripgrep, PHP, Python via regex module). In other languages like JavaScript or standard Python, you may need \uXXXX or \U000XXXXX for surrogate pairs.
- Combined Ranges: Multiple ranges can be grouped in character classes:
[\x{0900}-\x{097F}\x{0A00}-\x{0A7F}].
- Case Sensitivity: For ranges containing cased letters, ensure your tool is set to case-insensitive mode if required, though ranges often cover both.
Unicode Range Reference
For a comprehensive list of Unicode character hex ranges and regex blocks categorized by script, language, and symbol type, see the Unicode Range Reference.
Common Pitfalls
- Surrogate Pairs in JS/Python: If using standard JavaScript or Python (
re module, not regex), you cannot use \x{10000}. You must either use the \uXXXX equivalent, \U00010000, or the ES6 \u{10000} syntax with the /u flag in JS.
- Combined Ranges: Take care not to overlap or create invalid ranges when combining (e.g.,
[\x{2500}-\x{257F}\x{2580}-\x{259F}] can safely be written as [\x{2500}-\x{259F}]).
- Missing Characters: The ranges cover primary codepoints but might omit rarely used characters placed in Extended blocks unless the Extended blocks are explicitly included.
