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<title>Unicode character properties</title>
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<h2 class="title">Unicode character properties</h2>
<p class="para">
Since 5.1.0, three
additional escape sequences to match generic character types are available
when <em class="emphasis">UTF-8 mode</em> is selected. They are:
</p>
<dl>
<dt>
<span class="term"><em class="emphasis">\p{xx}</em></span>
<dd>
<span class="simpara">a character with the xx property</span></dd>
</dt>
<dt>
<span class="term"><em class="emphasis">\P{xx}</em></span>
<dd>
<span class="simpara">a character without the xx property</span></dd>
</dt>
<dt>
<span class="term"><em class="emphasis">\X</em></span>
<dd>
<span class="simpara">an extended Unicode sequence</span></dd>
</dt>
</dl>
<p class="para">
The property names represented by <em>xx</em> 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, <em>\p{^Lu}</em>
is the same as <em>\P{Lu}</em>.
</p>
<p class="para">
If only one letter is specified with <em>\p</em> or
<em>\P</em>, 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:
</p>
<div class="informalexample">
<div class="example-contents">
<div class="cdata"><pre>
\p{L}
\pL
</pre></div>
</div>
</div>
<table class="doctable table">
<caption><strong>Supported property codes</strong></caption>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Property</th>
<th>Matches</th>
<th>Notes</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody class="tbody">
<tr>
<td><em>C</em></td>
<td>Other</td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Cc</em></td>
<td>Control</td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Cf</em></td>
<td>Format</td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Cn</em></td>
<td>Unassigned</td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Co</em></td>
<td>Private use</td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Cs</em></td>
<td>Surrogate</td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>L</em></td>
<td>Letter</td>
<td>
Includes the following properties: <em>Ll</em>,
<em>Lm</em>, <em>Lo</em>, <em>Lt</em> and
<em>Lu</em>.
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Ll</em></td>
<td>Lower case letter</td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Lm</em></td>
<td>Modifier letter</td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Lo</em></td>
<td>Other letter</td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Lt</em></td>
<td>Title case letter</td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Lu</em></td>
<td>Upper case letter</td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>M</em></td>
<td>Mark</td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Mc</em></td>
<td>Spacing mark</td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Me</em></td>
<td>Enclosing mark</td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Mn</em></td>
<td>Non-spacing mark</td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>N</em></td>
<td>Number</td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Nd</em></td>
<td>Decimal number</td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Nl</em></td>
<td>Letter number</td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>No</em></td>
<td>Other number</td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>P</em></td>
<td>Punctuation</td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Pc</em></td>
<td>Connector punctuation</td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Pd</em></td>
<td>Dash punctuation</td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Pe</em></td>
<td>Close punctuation</td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Pf</em></td>
<td>Final punctuation</td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Pi</em></td>
<td>Initial punctuation</td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Po</em></td>
<td>Other punctuation</td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Ps</em></td>
<td>Open punctuation</td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>S</em></td>
<td>Symbol</td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Sc</em></td>
<td>Currency symbol</td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Sk</em></td>
<td>Modifier symbol</td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Sm</em></td>
<td>Mathematical symbol</td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>So</em></td>
<td>Other symbol</td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Z</em></td>
<td>Separator</td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Zl</em></td>
<td>Line separator</td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Zp</em></td>
<td>Paragraph separator</td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Zs</em></td>
<td>Space separator</td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p class="para">
Extended properties such as <em>InMusicalSymbols</em> are not
supported by PCRE.
</p>
<p class="para">
Specifying case-insensitive (caseless) matching does not affect these escape sequences.
For example, <em>\p{Lu}</em> always matches only upper case letters.
</p>
<p class="para">
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>
<ul class="itemizedlist">
<li class="listitem">
<span class="simpara"><em>\p{Greek}</em></span>
</li>
<li class="listitem">
<span class="simpara"><em>\P{Han}</em></span>
</li>
</ul>
<p class="para">
Those that are not part of an identified script are lumped together as
<em>Common</em>. The current list of scripts is:
</p>
<table class="doctable table">
<caption><strong>Supported scripts</strong></caption>
<tbody class="tbody">
<tr>
<td><em>Arabic</em></td>
<td><em>Armenian</em></td>
<td><em>Avestan</em></td>
<td><em>Balinese</em></td>
<td><em>Bamum</em></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Batak</em></td>
<td><em>Bengali</em></td>
<td><em>Bopomofo</em></td>
<td><em>Brahmi</em></td>
<td><em>Braille</em></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Buginese</em></td>
<td><em>Buhid</em></td>
<td><em>Canadian_Aboriginal</em></td>
<td><em>Carian</em></td>
<td><em>Chakma</em></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Cham</em></td>
<td><em>Cherokee</em></td>
<td><em>Common</em></td>
<td><em>Coptic</em></td>
<td><em>Cuneiform</em></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Cypriot</em></td>
<td><em>Cyrillic</em></td>
<td><em>Deseret</em></td>
<td><em>Devanagari</em></td>
<td><em>Egyptian_Hieroglyphs</em></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Ethiopic</em></td>
<td><em>Georgian</em></td>
<td><em>Glagolitic</em></td>
<td><em>Gothic</em></td>
<td><em>Greek</em></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Gujarati</em></td>
<td><em>Gurmukhi</em></td>
<td><em>Han</em></td>
<td><em>Hangul</em></td>
<td><em>Hanunoo</em></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Hebrew</em></td>
<td><em>Hiragana</em></td>
<td><em>Imperial_Aramaic</em></td>
<td><em>Inherited</em></td>
<td><em>Inscriptional_Pahlavi</em></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Inscriptional_Parthian</em></td>
<td><em>Javanese</em></td>
<td><em>Kaithi</em></td>
<td><em>Kannada</em></td>
<td><em>Katakana</em></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Kayah_Li</em></td>
<td><em>Kharoshthi</em></td>
<td><em>Khmer</em></td>
<td><em>Lao</em></td>
<td><em>Latin</em></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Lepcha</em></td>
<td><em>Limbu</em></td>
<td><em>Linear_B</em></td>
<td><em>Lisu</em></td>
<td><em>Lycian</em></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Lydian</em></td>
<td><em>Malayalam</em></td>
<td><em>Mandaic</em></td>
<td><em>Meetei_Mayek</em></td>
<td><em>Meroitic_Cursive</em></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Meroitic_Hieroglyphs</em></td>
<td><em>Miao</em></td>
<td><em>Mongolian</em></td>
<td><em>Myanmar</em></td>
<td><em>New_Tai_Lue</em></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Nko</em></td>
<td><em>Ogham</em></td>
<td><em>Old_Italic</em></td>
<td><em>Old_Persian</em></td>
<td><em>Old_South_Arabian</em></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Old_Turkic</em></td>
<td><em>Ol_Chiki</em></td>
<td><em>Oriya</em></td>
<td><em>Osmanya</em></td>
<td><em>Phags_Pa</em></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Phoenician</em></td>
<td><em>Rejang</em></td>
<td><em>Runic</em></td>
<td><em>Samaritan</em></td>
<td><em>Saurashtra</em></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Sharada</em></td>
<td><em>Shavian</em></td>
<td><em>Sinhala</em></td>
<td><em>Sora_Sompeng</em></td>
<td><em>Sundanese</em></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Syloti_Nagri</em></td>
<td><em>Syriac</em></td>
<td><em>Tagalog</em></td>
<td><em>Tagbanwa</em></td>
<td><em>Tai_Le</em></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Tai_Tham</em></td>
<td><em>Tai_Viet</em></td>
<td><em>Takri</em></td>
<td><em>Tamil</em></td>
<td><em>Telugu</em></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Thaana</em></td>
<td><em>Thai</em></td>
<td><em>Tibetan</em></td>
<td><em>Tifinagh</em></td>
<td><em>Ugaritic</em></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><em>Vai</em></td>
<td><em>Yi</em></td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
<td class="empty"> </td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p class="para">
The <em>\X</em> 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 <em>.</em> as it will match one
composed character, regardless of how many individual characters are
actually used to render it.
</p>
<p class="para">
In versions of PCRE older than 8.32 (which corresponds to PHP versions
before 5.4.14 when using the bundled PCRE library), <em>\X</em>
is equivalent to <em>(?>\PM\pM*)</em>. 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.
</p>
<p class="para">
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
<em>\d</em> and <em>\w</em> do not use Unicode properties
in PCRE.
</p>
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