# Ruby 1.9.2: /\\w/u does not match umlauts ("ü") **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [September 29, 2010, 3:42pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-1-9-2-w-u-does-not-match-umlauts-a/195753 "2010-09-29T15:42:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ee7513/32.png) [@andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/andreas)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2010, 3:42pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-1-9-2-w-u-does-not-match-umlauts-a/195753/1 "2010-09-29T15:42:36Z")
I found that, unlike Ruby 1.8, the word character class in Ruby 1.9 regexes does not match german umlauts (or any other letters other than ASCII). According to the oniguruma documentation ([サービス終了のお知らせ](http://www.geocities.jp/kosako3/oniguruma/doc/RE.txt)), it should match everything from the unicode “letter” category, which includes umlauts. test.rb (also attached): # encoding: utf-8 $KCODE=‘u’ s = “ü” puts s.match(/\w/u).inspect Result with ruby 1.8: #\ Result with ruby 1.9.2: nil Is that a bug, or is there any reason behind this behavior? ---
**Author:** ![andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ee7513/32.png) [@andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/andreas)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2010, 5:18pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-1-9-2-w-u-does-not-match-umlauts-a/195753/2 "2010-09-29T17:18:43Z")
After some more googleing I found this bug report (don’t know why I didn’t catch it earlier) that states that this is the desired behavior: [http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/show/3181](http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/show/3181) Still, I don’t understand the motivation for making this change. ---
**Author:** ![andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ee7513/32.png) [@andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/andreas)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2010, 5:59pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-1-9-2-w-u-does-not-match-umlauts-a/195753/3 "2010-09-29T17:59:05Z")
> [Ruby Talk FAQ · rdp/ruby\_tutorials\_core Wiki · GitHub](http://github.com/rdp/ruby_tutorials_core/wiki/Ruby-Talk-FAQ#unicode_not_found) “Basically at a certain patch level of 1.9.1, \w was set to no longer match unicode characters, because the core developers were concerned that this was not what people expected from \w.” Well, 1.9.2 behaving differently than 1.9.1 and 1.8 is certainly less expected. Apparently in 1.9 \p{Word} can be used instead of \w to match unicode characters; however I did not find any documentation for this (“word” it’s not a unicode character category). ---
**Author:** ![andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ee7513/32.png) [@andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/andreas)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2010, 5:36pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-1-9-2-w-u-does-not-match-umlauts-a/195753/4 "2010-09-29T17:36:15Z")
Andreas S. wrote: > I found that, unlike Ruby 1.8, the word character class in Ruby 1.9 > regexes does not match german umlauts (or any other letters other than > ASCII). According to the oniguruma documentation > ([サービス終了のお知らせ](http://www.geocities.jp/kosako3/oniguruma/doc/RE.txt)), it should match > everything from the unicode “letter” category, which includes umlauts. > **[Ruby Talk FAQ](https://github.com/rdp/ruby_tutorials_core/wiki/Ruby-Talk-FAQ#unicode_not_found)** > > code examples to help enrich the documentation available for ruby's core classes ri output of the core classes - rdp/ruby\_tutorials\_core so it’s intended, however if you extremely dislike this, then complain about it since apparently it’s surprising to a number of people 🙂 -r ---
**Author:** ![andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ee7513/32.png) [@andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/andreas)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2010, 10:14pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-1-9-2-w-u-does-not-match-umlauts-a/195753/5 "2010-09-29T22:14:59Z")
> Well, 1.9.2 behaving differently than 1.9.1 and 1.8 is certainly less > expected. yeah. 1.9.1 behaving differently with a different _patch level_ is less than expected, too. > Apparently in 1.9 \p{Word} can be used instead of \w to match unicode > characters; however I did not find any documentation for this (“word” > it’s not a unicode character category). That’s odd that there’s no standard. Maybe ruby made this up on their own, then? I think it’s mentioned briefly [http://svn.ruby-lang.org/repos/ruby/trunk/doc/re.rdoc](http://svn.ruby-lang.org/repos/ruby/trunk/doc/re.rdoc) ---
**Author:** ![andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/ee7513/32.png) [@andreas](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/andreas)\ **Post date:** [October 2, 2010, 3:56pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-1-9-2-w-u-does-not-match-umlauts-a/195753/6 "2010-10-02T15:56:58Z")
Andreas S.: > Apparently in 1.9 \p{Word} can be used instead of \w to match unicode > characters; however I did not find any documentation for this (“word” > it’s not a unicode character category). You can also use the (documneted) \p{L} property: chastell@devielle:~$ ruby -ve “p ‘℉üüü’ =~ /\p{L}/” ruby 1.9.2p0 (2010-08-18 revision 29036) [x86\_64-linux] 1 BTW: I find [Regex Tutorial - Unicode Characters and Properties](http://www.regular-expressions.info/unicode.html#prop) most useful. — Piotr S.