Unicode friendly alphabetic pattern for python regex?

Question

I'm looking for a pattern equivalent to \w, and which doesn't match numeric pattern. I cannot use [a-zA-Z] because I would like it to match japanese kanjis as well.

Is there a way to write something like [\w^[0-9]] ? Is there an equivalent of [:alpha:] in python regex?

Answer 1

[^\W\d]

Throw out non-word characters and throw out digits. Keep the rest.

Answer 2

Please, read this: http://docs.python.org/library/re.html or just open this page and search for unicode with your browser. Everything you need is explained.