# UTF-8 regular expressions

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/utf-8-regular-expressions/51057>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [December 24, 2005, 10:40pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/utf-8-regular-expressions/51057 "2005-12-24T22:40:14Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![blewis](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/c57346/32.png) [@blewis](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/blewis)\
**Post date:** [December 24, 2005, 10:40pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/utf-8-regular-expressions/51057/1 "2005-12-24T22:40:14Z")

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Hi,  
So I read the post from awhile back about packing multi-byte UTF-8  
characters as octal:

r = Regexp.compile(“ab\304\243cd”, 0, “UTF-8”)

or  
r = Regexp.compile(“ab#{[0x123].pack(‘U’)}cd”, 0, “UTF-8”)

So this seems to be a way to list out individual multi-byte UTF-8  
characters  
I was wondering if there’s then a convenient way to specify a range of  
UTF-8 characters?

For instance the darn  
0x2002-2003  
0x2013-2014  
0x2018-201E  
characters?

Thanks,  
Ben