Using range in regex for Arabic letters

Question

When using Regex in Python, it\'s easy to use brackets to represent a range of characters a-z, but this doesn\'t seem to be working for other languages, like Ar

Answer 1

Use Unicode escapes instead.

>>> re.compile('[\u0627-\u064a]')
<_sre.SRE_Pattern object at 0x237f460>

Answer 2

Since Arabic character is rendered from right to left, the correct string below, which reads "from ا to ي" is rendered backward (try to select the string if you want to confirm):

'[ا-ي]'

Console output:

>>> re.compile('[ا-ي]')
<_sre.SRE_Pattern object at 0x6001f0a80>

>>> re.compile('[ا-ي]', re.DEBUG)
in
  range (1575, 1610)
<_sre.SRE_Pattern object at 0x6001f0440>

So your pattern '[ي-ا]', is actually "from ي to ا", which is an invalid range, since the code point of ا is smaller than code point of ي.

To prevent confusion, Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams's suggestion of using Unicode escape is a good alternative to the solution I provide above.