=head1 NAME
X<character class>

perlrecharclass - Perl Regular Expression Character Classes

=head1 DESCRIPTION

The top level documentation about Perl regular expressions
is found in L<perlre>.

This manual page discusses the syntax and use of character
classes in Perl regular expressions.

A character class is a way of denoting a set of characters
in such a way that one character of the set is matched.
It's important to remember that: matching a character class
consumes exactly one character in the source string. (The source
string is the string the regular expression is matched against.)

There are three types of character classes in Perl regular
expressions: the dot, backslash sequences, and the form enclosed in square
brackets.  Keep in mind, though, that often the term "character class" is used
to mean just the bracketed form.  Certainly, most Perl documentation does that.

=head2 The dot

The dot (or period), C<.> is probably the most used, and certainly
the most well-known character class. By default, a dot matches any
character, except for the newline. The default can be changed to
add matching the newline by using the I<single line> modifier: either
for the entire regular expression with the C</s> modifier, or
locally with C<(?s)>.  (The experimental C<\N> backslash sequence, described
below, matches any character except newline without regard to the
I<single line> modifier.)

Here are some examples:

 "a"  =~  /./       # Match
 "."  =~  /./       # Match
 ""   =~  /./       # No match (dot has to match a character)
 "\n" =~  /./       # No match (dot does not match a newline)
 "\n" =~  /./s      # Match (global 'single line' modifier)
 "\n" =~  /(?s:.)/  # Match (local 'single line' modifier)
 "ab" =~  /^.$/     # No match (dot matches one character)

=head2 Backslash sequences
X<\w> X<\W> X<\s> X<\S> X<\d> X<\D> X<\p> X<\P> 
X<\N> X<\v> X<\V> X<\h> X<\H>
X<word> X<whitespace>

A backslash sequence is a sequence of characters, the first one of which is a
backslash.  Perl ascribes special meaning to many such sequences, and some of
these are character classes.  That is, they match a single character each,
provided that the character belongs to the specific set of characters defined
by the sequence.

Here's a list of the backslash sequences that are character classes.  They
are discussed in more detail below.  (For the backslash sequences that aren't
character classes, see L<perlrebackslash>.)

 \d             Match a decimal digit character.
 \D             Match a non-decimal-digit character.
 \w             Match a "word" character.
 \W             Match a non-"word" character.
 \s             Match a whitespace character.
 \S             Match a non-whitespace character.
 \h             Match a horizontal whitespace character.
 \H             Match a character that isn't horizontal whitespace.
 \v             Match a vertical whitespace character.
 \V             Match a character that isn't vertical whitespace.
 \N             Match a character that isn't a newline.  Experimental.
 \pP, \p{Prop}  Match a character that has the given Unicode property.
 \PP, \P{Prop}  Match a character that doesn't have the Unicode property

=head3 Digits

C<\d> matches a single character considered to be a decimal I<digit>.
What is considered a decimal digit depends on several factors, detailed
below in L</Locale, EBCDIC, Unicode and UTF-8>.  If those factors
indicate a Unicode interpretation, C<\d> not only matches the digits
'0' - '9', but also Arabic, Devanagari, and digits from other languages.
Otherwise, if a locale is in effect, it matches whatever characters that
locale considers decimal digits.  Only when neither a Unicode interpretation
nor locale prevails does C<\d> match only the digits '0' to '9' alone.

Unicode digits may cause some confusion, and some security issues.  In UTF-8
strings, unless the C<"a"> regular expression modifier is specified,
C<\d> matches the same characters matched by
C<\p{General_Category=Decimal_Number}>, or synonymously,
C<\p{General_Category=Digit}>.  Starting with Unicode version 4.1, this is the
same set of characters matched by C<\p{Numeric_Type=Decimal}>.  

But Unicode also has a different property with a similar name,
C<\p{Numeric_Type=Digit}>, which matches a completely different set of
characters.  These characters are things such as subscripts.

The design intent is for C<\d> to match all digits (and no other characters)
that can be used with "normal" big-endian positional decimal syntax, whereby a
sequence of such digits {N0, N1, N2, ...Nn} has the numeric value (...(N0 * 10
+ N1) * 10 + N2) * 10 ... + Nn).  In Unicode 5.2, the Tamil digits (U+0BE6 -
U+0BEF) can also legally be used in old-style Tamil numbers in which they would
appear no more than one in a row, separated by characters that mean "times 10",
"times 100", etc.  (See L<http://www.unicode.org/notes/tn21>.)

Some non-European digits that C<\d> matches look like European ones, but
have different values.  For example, BENGALI DIGIT FOUR (U+09EA) looks
very much like an ASCII DIGIT EIGHT (U+0038).

It may be useful for security purposes for an application to require that all
digits in a row be from the same script.   See L<Unicode::UCD/charscript()>.

Any character not matched by C<\d> is matched by C<\D>.

=head3 Word characters

A C<\w> matches a single alphanumeric character (an alphabetic character, or a
decimal digit) or a connecting punctuation character, such as an
underscore ("_").  It does not match a whole word.  To match a whole
word, use C<\w+>.  This isn't the same thing as matching an English word, but 
in the ASCII range it is the same as a string of Perl-identifier
characters.  What is considered a
word character depends on several factors, detailed below in L</Locale,
EBCDIC, Unicode and UTF-8>.  If those factors indicate a Unicode
interpretation, C<\w> matches the characters considered word
characters in the Unicode database. That is, it not only matches ASCII letters,
but also Thai letters, Greek letters, etc.  This includes connector
punctuation (like the underscore) which connect two words together, or
diacritics, such as a C<COMBINING TILDE> and the modifier letters, which
are generally used to add auxiliary markings to letters.   If a Unicode
interpretation is not indicated, C<\w> matches those characters considered
word characters by the current locale or EBCDIC code page.  Without a
locale or EBCDIC code page, C<\w> matches the underscore and ASCII letters 
and digits. 

There are a number of security issues with the full Unicode list of word
characters.  See L<http://unicode.org/reports/tr36>.

Also, for a somewhat finer-grained set of characters that are in programming
language identifiers beyond the ASCII range, you may wish to instead use the
more customized Unicode properties, "ID_Start", ID_Continue", "XID_Start", and
"XID_Continue".  See L<http://unicode.org/reports/tr31>.

Any character not matched by C<\w> is matched by C<\W>.

=head3 Whitespace

C<\s> matches any single character considered whitespace.  The exact
set of characters matched by C<\s> depends on several factors, detailed
below in L</Locale, EBCDIC, Unicode and UTF-8>.  If those factors
indicate a Unicode interpretation, C<\s> matches what is considered
whitespace in the Unicode database; the complete list is in the table
below. Otherwise, if a locale or EBCDIC code page is in effect,
C<\s> matches whatever is considered whitespace by the current locale or
EBCDIC code page. Without a locale or EBCDIC code page, C<\s> matches
the horizontal tab (C<\t>), the newline (C<\n>), the form feed (C<\f>),
the carriage return (C<\r>), and the space.  (Note that it doesn't match
the vertical tab, C<\cK>.)  Perhaps the most notable possible surprise
is that C<\s> matches a non-breaking space B<only> if a Unicode
interpretation is indicated, or the locale or EBCDIC code page that is
in effect happens to have that character.

Any character not matched by C<\s> is matched by C<\S>.

C<\h> matches any character considered horizontal whitespace;
this includes the space and tab characters and several others 
listed in the table below.  C<\H> matches any character
not considered horizontal whitespace.

C<\v> matches any character considered vertical whitespace;
this includes the carriage return and line feed characters (newline) 
plus several other characters, all listed in the table below.
C<\V> matches any character not considered vertical whitespace.

C<\R> matches anything that can be considered a newline under Unicode
rules. It's not a character class, as it can match a multi-character
sequence. Therefore, it cannot be used inside a bracketed character
class; use C<\v> instead (vertical whitespace).
Details are discussed in L<perlrebackslash>.

Note that unlike C<\s>, C<\d> and C<\w>, C<\h> and C<\v> always match
the same characters, without regard to other factors, such as whether the
source string is in UTF-8 format.

One might think that C<\s> is equivalent to C<[\h\v]>. This is not true.  The
vertical tab (C<"\x0b">) is not matched by C<\s>, it is however considered
vertical whitespace. Furthermore, if the source string is not in UTF-8 format,
and any locale or EBCDIC code page that is in effect doesn't include them, the
next line (ASCII-platform C<"\x85">) and the no-break space (ASCII-platform
C<"\xA0">) characters are not matched by C<\s>, but are by C<\v> and C<\h>
respectively.  If the C<"a"> modifier is not in effect and the source
string is in UTF-8 format, both the next line and the no-break space 
are matched by C<\s>.

The following table is a complete listing of characters matched by
C<\s>, C<\h> and C<\v> as of Unicode 5.2.

The first column gives the code point of the character (in hex format),
the second column gives the (Unicode) name. The third column indicates
by which class(es) the character is matched (assuming no locale or EBCDIC code
page is in effect that changes the C<\s> matching).

 0x00009        CHARACTER TABULATION   h s
 0x0000a              LINE FEED (LF)    vs
 0x0000b             LINE TABULATION    v
 0x0000c              FORM FEED (FF)    vs
 0x0000d        CARRIAGE RETURN (CR)    vs
 0x00020                       SPACE   h s
 0x00085             NEXT LINE (NEL)    vs  [1]
 0x000a0              NO-BREAK SPACE   h s  [1]
 0x01680            OGHAM SPACE MARK   h s
 0x0180e   MONGOLIAN VOWEL SEPARATOR   h s
 0x02000                     EN QUAD   h s
 0x02001                     EM QUAD   h s
 0x02002                    EN SPACE   h s
 0x02003                    EM SPACE   h s
 0x02004          THREE-PER-EM SPACE   h s
 0x02005           FOUR-PER-EM SPACE   h s
 0x02006            SIX-PER-EM SPACE   h s
 0x02007                FIGURE SPACE   h s
 0x02008           PUNCTUATION SPACE   h s
 0x02009                  THIN SPACE   h s
 0x0200a                  HAIR SPACE   h s
 0x02028              LINE SEPARATOR    vs
 0x02029         PARAGRAPH SEPARATOR    vs
 0x0202f       NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE   h s
 0x0205f   MEDIUM MATHEMATICAL SPACE   h s
 0x03000           IDEOGRAPHIC SPACE   h s

=over 4

=item [1]

NEXT LINE and NO-BREAK SPACE only match C<\s> if the source string is in
UTF-8 format and the C<"a"> modifier is not in effect, or if the locale 
or EBCDIC code page in effect includes them.

=back

It is worth noting that C<\d>, C<\w>, etc, match single characters, not
complete numbers or words. To match a number (that consists of digits),
use C<\d+>; to match a word, use C<\w+>.

=head3 \N

C<\N> is new in 5.12, and is experimental.  It, like the dot, matches any
character that is not a newline. The difference is that C<\N> is not influenced
by the I<single line> regular expression modifier (see L</The dot> above).  Note
that the form C<\N{...}> may mean something completely different.  When the
C<{...}> is a L<quantifier|perlre/Quantifiers>, it means to match a non-newline
character that many times.  For example, C<\N{3}> means to match 3
non-newlines; C<\N{5,}> means to match 5 or more non-newlines.  But if C<{...}>
is not a legal quantifier, it is presumed to be a named character.  See
L<charnames> for those.  For example, none of C<\N{COLON}>, C<\N{4F}>, and
C<\N{F4}> contain legal quantifiers, so Perl will try to find characters whose
names are respectively C<COLON>, C<4F>, and C<F4>.

=head3 Unicode Properties

C<\pP> and C<\p{Prop}> are character classes to match characters that fit given
Unicode properties.  One letter property names can be used in the C<\pP> form,
with the property name following the C<\p>, otherwise, braces are required.
When using braces, there is a single form, which is just the property name
enclosed in the braces, and a compound form which looks like C<\p{name=value}>,
which means to match if the property "name" for the character has that particular
"value".
For instance, a match for a number can be written as C</\pN/> or as
C</\p{Number}/>, or as C</\p{Number=True}/>.
Lowercase letters are matched by the property I<Lowercase_Letter> which
has as short form I<Ll>. They need the braces, so are written as C</\p{Ll}/> or
C</\p{Lowercase_Letter}/>, or C</\p{General_Category=Lowercase_Letter}/>
(the underscores are optional).
C</\pLl/> is valid, but means something different.
It matches a two character string: a letter (Unicode property C<\pL>),
followed by a lowercase C<l>.

Note that almost all properties are immune to case-insensitive matching.
That is, adding a C</i> regular expression modifier does not change what
they match.  There are two sets affected.  The first set is
C<Uppercase_Letter>,
C<Lowercase_Letter>,
and C<Titlecase_Letter>,
all of which match C<Cased_Letter> under C</i> matching.
The second set is
C<Uppercase>,
C<Lowercase>,
and C<Titlecase>,
all of which match C<Cased> under C</i> matching.
(The difference between these sets is that some things, such as Roman
Numerals, come in both upper and lower case so they are C<Cased>, but
aren't considered to be letters, so they aren't C<Cased_Letter>s. They're
actually C<Letter_Number>s.) 
This set also includes its subsets C<PosixUpper> and C<PosixLower>, both 
of which under C</i> matching match C<PosixAlpha>.

For more details on Unicode properties, see L<perlunicode/Unicode
Character Properties>; for a
complete list of possible properties, see
L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>,
which notes all forms that have C</i> differences.
It is also possible to define your own properties. This is discussed in
L<perlunicode/User-Defined Character Properties>.

=head4 Examples

 "a"  =~  /\w/      # Match, "a" is a 'word' character.
 "7"  =~  /\w/      # Match, "7" is a 'word' character as well.
 "a"  =~  /\d/      # No match, "a" isn't a digit.
 "7"  =~  /\d/      # Match, "7" is a digit.
 " "  =~  /\s/      # Match, a space is whitespace.
 "a"  =~  /\D/      # Match, "a" is a non-digit.
 "7"  =~  /\D/      # No match, "7" is not a non-digit.
 " "  =~  /\S/      # No match, a space is not non-whitespace.

 " "  =~  /\h/      # Match, space is horizontal whitespace.
 " "  =~  /\v/      # No match, space is not vertical whitespace.
 "\r" =~  /\v/      # Match, a return is vertical whitespace.

 "a"  =~  /\pL/     # Match, "a" is a letter.
 "a"  =~  /\p{Lu}/  # No match, /\p{Lu}/ matches upper case letters.

 "\x{0e0b}" =~ /\p{Thai}/  # Match, \x{0e0b} is the character
                           # 'THAI CHARACTER SO SO', and that's in
                           # Thai Unicode class.
 "a"  =~  /\P{Lao}/ # Match, as "a" is not a Laotian character.


=head2 Bracketed Character Classes

The third form of character class you can use in Perl regular expressions
is the bracketed character class.  In its simplest form, it lists the characters
that may be matched, surrounded by square brackets, like this: C<[aeiou]>.
This matches one of C<a>, C<e>, C<i>, C<o> or C<u>.  Like the other
character classes, exactly one character is matched. To match
a longer string consisting of characters mentioned in the character
class, follow the character class with a L<quantifier|perlre/Quantifiers>.  For
instance, C<[aeiou]+> matches one or more lowercase English vowels.

Repeating a character in a character class has no
effect; it's considered to be in the set only once.

Examples:

 "e"  =~  /[aeiou]/        # Match, as "e" is listed in the class.
 "p"  =~  /[aeiou]/        # No match, "p" is not listed in the class.
 "ae" =~  /^[aeiou]$/      # No match, a character class only matches
                           # a single character.
 "ae" =~  /^[aeiou]+$/     # Match, due to the quantifier.

=head3 Special Characters Inside a Bracketed Character Class

Most characters that are meta characters in regular expressions (that
is, characters that carry a special meaning like C<.>, C<*>, or C<(>) lose
their special meaning and can be used inside a character class without
the need to escape them. For instance, C<[()]> matches either an opening
parenthesis, or a closing parenthesis, and the parens inside the character
class don't group or capture.

Characters that may carry a special meaning inside a character class are:
C<\>, C<^>, C<->, C<[> and C<]>, and are discussed below. They can be
escaped with a backslash, although this is sometimes not needed, in which
case the backslash may be omitted.

The sequence C<\b> is special inside a bracketed character class. While
outside the character class, C<\b> is an assertion indicating a point
that does not have either two word characters or two non-word characters
on either side, inside a bracketed character class, C<\b> matches a
backspace character.

The sequences
C<\a>,
C<\c>,
C<\e>,
C<\f>,
C<\n>,
C<\N{I<NAME>}>,
C<\N{U+I<hex char>}>,
C<\r>,
C<\t>,
and
C<\x>
are also special and have the same meanings as they do outside a
bracketed character class.  (However, inside a bracketed character
class, if C<\N{I<NAME>}> expands to a sequence of characters, only the first
one in the sequence is used, with a warning.)

Also, a backslash followed by two or three octal digits is considered an octal
number.

A C<[> is not special inside a character class, unless it's the start of a
POSIX character class (see L</POSIX Character Classes> below). It normally does
not need escaping.

A C<]> is normally either the end of a POSIX character class (see
L</POSIX Character Classes> below), or it signals the end of the bracketed
character class.  If you want to include a C<]> in the set of characters, you
must generally escape it.

However, if the C<]> is the I<first> (or the second if the first
character is a caret) character of a bracketed character class, it
does not denote the end of the class (as you cannot have an empty class)
and is considered part of the set of characters that can be matched without
escaping.

Examples:

 "+"   =~ /[+?*]/     #  Match, "+" in a character class is not special.
 "\cH" =~ /[\b]/      #  Match, \b inside in a character class
                      #  is equivalent to a backspace.
 "]"   =~ /[][]/      #  Match, as the character class contains.
                      #  both [ and ].
 "[]"  =~ /[[]]/      #  Match, the pattern contains a character class
                      #  containing just ], and the character class is
                      #  followed by a ].

=head3 Character Ranges

It is not uncommon to want to match a range of characters. Luckily, instead
of listing all characters in the range, one may use the hyphen (C<->).
If inside a bracketed character class you have two characters separated
by a hyphen, it's treated as if all characters between the two were in
the class. For instance, C<[0-9]> matches any ASCII digit, and C<[a-m]>
matches any lowercase letter from the first half of the old ASCII alphabet.

Note that the two characters on either side of the hyphen are not
necessarily both letters or both digits. Any character is possible,
although not advisable.  C<['-?]> contains a range of characters, but
most people will not know which characters that means.  Furthermore,
such ranges may lead to portability problems if the code has to run on
a platform that uses a different character set, such as EBCDIC.

If a hyphen in a character class cannot syntactically be part of a range, for
instance because it is the first or the last character of the character class,
or if it immediately follows a range, the hyphen isn't special, and so is
considered a character to be matched literally.  If you want a hyphen in
your set of characters to be matched and its position in the class is such
that it could be considered part of a range, you must escape that hyphen
with a backslash.

Examples:

 [a-z]       #  Matches a character that is a lower case ASCII letter.
 [a-fz]      #  Matches any letter between 'a' and 'f' (inclusive) or
             #  the letter 'z'.
 [-z]        #  Matches either a hyphen ('-') or the letter 'z'.
 [a-f-m]     #  Matches any letter between 'a' and 'f' (inclusive), the
             #  hyphen ('-'), or the letter 'm'.
 ['-?]       #  Matches any of the characters  '()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?
             #  (But not on an EBCDIC platform).


=head3 Negation

It is also possible to instead list the characters you do not want to
match. You can do so by using a caret (C<^>) as the first character in the
character class. For instance, C<[^a-z]> matches any character that is not a
lowercase ASCII letter, which therefore includes almost a hundred thousand
Unicode letters.

This syntax make the caret a special character inside a bracketed character
class, but only if it is the first character of the class. So if you want
the caret as one of the characters to match, either escape the caret or 
else not list it first.

Examples:

 "e"  =~  /[^aeiou]/   #  No match, the 'e' is listed.
 "x"  =~  /[^aeiou]/   #  Match, as 'x' isn't a lowercase vowel.
 "^"  =~  /[^^]/       #  No match, matches anything that isn't a caret.
 "^"  =~  /[x^]/       #  Match, caret is not special here.

=head3 Backslash Sequences

You can put any backslash sequence character class (with the exception of
C<\N> and C<\R>) inside a bracketed character class, and it will act just
as if you had put all characters matched by the backslash sequence inside the
character class. For instance, C<[a-f\d]> matches any decimal digit, or any
of the lowercase letters between 'a' and 'f' inclusive.

C<\N> within a bracketed character class must be of the forms C<\N{I<name>}>
or C<\N{U+I<hex char>}>, and NOT be the form that matches non-newlines,
for the same reason that a dot C<.> inside a bracketed character class loses
its special meaning: it matches nearly anything, which generally isn't what you
want to happen.


Examples:

 /[\p{Thai}\d]/     # Matches a character that is either a Thai
                    # character, or a digit.
 /[^\p{Arabic}()]/  # Matches a character that is neither an Arabic
                    # character, nor a parenthesis.

Backslash sequence character classes cannot form one of the endpoints
of a range.  Thus, you can't say:

 /[\p{Thai}-\d]/     # Wrong!

=head3 POSIX Character Classes
X<character class> X<\p> X<\p{}>
X<alpha> X<alnum> X<ascii> X<blank> X<cntrl> X<digit> X<graph>
X<lower> X<print> X<punct> X<space> X<upper> X<word> X<xdigit>

POSIX character classes have the form C<[:class:]>, where I<class> is
name, and the C<[:> and C<:]> delimiters. POSIX character classes only appear
I<inside> bracketed character classes, and are a convenient and descriptive
way of listing a group of characters, though they can suffer from
portability issues (see below and L<Locale, EBCDIC, Unicode and UTF-8>).

Be careful about the syntax,

 # Correct:
 $string =~ /[[:alpha:]]/

 # Incorrect (will warn):
 $string =~ /[:alpha:]/

The latter pattern would be a character class consisting of a colon,
and the letters C<a>, C<l>, C<p> and C<h>.
POSIX character classes can be part of a larger bracketed character class.  
For example,

 [01[:alpha:]%]

is valid and matches '0', '1', any alphabetic character, and the percent sign.

Perl recognizes the following POSIX character classes:

 alpha  Any alphabetical character ("[A-Za-z]").
 alnum  Any alphanumeric character. ("[A-Za-z0-9]")
 ascii  Any character in the ASCII character set.
 blank  A GNU extension, equal to a space or a horizontal tab ("\t").
 cntrl  Any control character.  See Note [2] below.
 digit  Any decimal digit ("[0-9]"), equivalent to "\d".
 graph  Any printable character, excluding a space.  See Note [3] below.
 lower  Any lowercase character ("[a-z]").
 print  Any printable character, including a space.  See Note [4] below.
 punct  Any graphical character excluding "word" characters.  Note [5].
 space  Any whitespace character. "\s" plus the vertical tab ("\cK").
 upper  Any uppercase character ("[A-Z]").
 word   A Perl extension ("[A-Za-z0-9_]"), equivalent to "\w".
 xdigit Any hexadecimal digit ("[0-9a-fA-F]").

Most POSIX character classes have two Unicode-style C<\p> property
counterparts.  (They are not official Unicode properties, but Perl extensions
derived from official Unicode properties.)  The table below shows the relation
between POSIX character classes and these counterparts.

One counterpart, in the column labelled "ASCII-range Unicode" in
the table, matches only characters in the ASCII character set.

The other counterpart, in the column labelled "Full-range Unicode", matches any
appropriate characters in the full Unicode character set.  For example,
C<\p{Alpha}> matches not just the ASCII alphabetic characters, but any
character in the entire Unicode character set considered alphabetic.  
The column labelled "backslash sequence" is a (short) synonym for
the Full-range Unicode form.

(Each of the counterparts has various synonyms as well.
L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}> lists all
synonyms, plus all characters matched by each ASCII-range property.  
For example, C<\p{AHex}> is a synonym for C<\p{ASCII_Hex_Digit}>,
and any C<\p> property name can be prefixed with "Is" such as C<\p{IsAlpha}>.)

Both the C<\p> forms are unaffected by any locale in effect, or whether
the string is in UTF-8 format or not, or whether the platform is EBCDIC or not.
In contrast, the POSIX character classes are affected, unless the
regular expression is compiled with the C<"a"> modifier.  If the C<"a">
modifier is not in effect, and the source string is in UTF-8 format, the
POSIX classes behave like their "Full-range" Unicode counterparts.  If
C<"a"> modifier is in effect; or the source string is not in UTF-8
format, and no locale is in effect, and the platform is not EBCDIC, all
the POSIX classes behave like their ASCII-range counterparts.
Otherwise, they behave based on the rules of the locale or EBCDIC code
page.

It is proposed to change this behavior in a future release of Perl so that the
the UTF-8-ness of the source string will be irrelevant to the behavior of the
POSIX character classes.  This means they will always behave in strict
accordance with the official POSIX standard.  That is, if either locale or
EBCDIC code page is present, they will behave in accordance with those; if
absent, the classes will match only their ASCII-range counterparts.  If you
wish to comment on this proposal, send email to C<perl5-porters@perl.org>.

 [[:...:]]      ASCII-range          Full-range  backslash  Note
                 Unicode              Unicode     sequence
 -----------------------------------------------------
   alpha      \p{PosixAlpha}       \p{XPosixAlpha}
   alnum      \p{PosixAlnum}       \p{XPosixAlnum}
   ascii      \p{ASCII}          
   blank      \p{PosixBlank}       \p{XPosixBlank}  \h      [1]
                                   or \p{HorizSpace}        [1]
   cntrl      \p{PosixCntrl}       \p{XPosixCntrl}          [2]
   digit      \p{PosixDigit}       \p{XPosixDigit}  \d
   graph      \p{PosixGraph}       \p{XPosixGraph}          [3]
   lower      \p{PosixLower}       \p{XPosixLower}
   print      \p{PosixPrint}       \p{XPosixPrint}          [4]
   punct      \p{PosixPunct}       \p{XPosixPunct}          [5]
              \p{PerlSpace}        \p{XPerlSpace}   \s      [6]
   space      \p{PosixSpace}       \p{XPosixSpace}          [6]
   upper      \p{PosixUpper}       \p{XPosixUpper}
   word       \p{PosixWord}        \p{XPosixWord}   \w
   xdigit     \p{ASCII_Hex_Digit}  \p{XPosixXDigit}

=over 4

=item [1]

C<\p{Blank}> and C<\p{HorizSpace}> are synonyms.

=item [2]

Control characters don't produce output as such, but instead usually control
the terminal somehow: for example, newline and backspace are control characters.
In the ASCII range, characters whose ordinals are between 0 and 31 inclusive,
plus 127 (C<DEL>) are control characters.

On EBCDIC platforms, it is likely that the code page will define C<[[:cntrl:]]>
to be the EBCDIC equivalents of the ASCII controls, plus the controls
that in Unicode have ordinals from 128 through 159.

=item [3]

Any character that is I<graphical>, that is, visible. This class consists
of all alphanumeric characters and all punctuation characters.

=item [4]

All printable characters, which is the set of all graphical characters
plus those whitespace characters which are not also controls.

=item [5]

C<\p{PosixPunct}> and C<[[:punct:]]> in the ASCII range match all
non-controls, non-alphanumeric, non-space characters:
C<[-!"#$%&'()*+,./:;<=E<gt>?@[\\\]^_`{|}~]> (although if a locale is in effect,
it could alter the behavior of C<[[:punct:]]>).

The similarly named property, C<\p{Punct}>, matches a somewhat different
set in the ASCII range, namely
C<[-!"#%&'()*,./:;?@[\\\]_{}]>.  That is, it is missing C<[$+E<lt>=E<gt>^`|~]>.
This is because Unicode splits what POSIX considers to be punctuation into two
categories, Punctuation and Symbols.

C<\p{XPosixPunct}> and (in Unicode mode) C<[[:punct:]]>, match what
C<\p{PosixPunct}> matches in the ASCII range, plus what C<\p{Punct}>
matches.  This is different than strictly matching according to
C<\p{Punct}>.  Another way to say it is that
for a UTF-8 string, C<[[:punct:]]> matches all characters that Unicode
considers punctuation, plus all ASCII-range characters that Unicode
considers symbols.

=item [6]

C<\p{SpacePerl}> and C<\p{Space}> differ only in that C<\p{Space}> additionally
matches the vertical tab, C<\cK>.   Same for the two ASCII-only range forms.

=back

There are various other synonyms that can be used for these besides
C<\p{HorizSpace}> and \C<\p{XPosixBlank}>.  For example,
C<\p{PosixAlpha}> can be written as C<\p{Alpha}>.  All are listed
in L<perluniprops/Properties accessible through \p{} and \P{}>.

=head4 Negation
X<character class, negation>

A Perl extension to the POSIX character class is the ability to
negate it. This is done by prefixing the class name with a caret (C<^>).
Some examples:

     POSIX         ASCII-range     Full-range  backslash
                    Unicode         Unicode    sequence
 -----------------------------------------------------
 [[:^digit:]]   \P{PosixDigit}  \P{XPosixDigit}   \D
 [[:^space:]]   \P{PosixSpace}  \P{XPosixSpace}
                \P{PerlSpace}   \P{XPerlSpace}    \S
 [[:^word:]]    \P{PerlWord}    \P{XPosixWord}    \W

The backslash sequence can mean either ASCII- or Full-range Unicode,
depending on various factors.  See L</Locale, EBCDIC, Unicode and UTF-8>
below.

=head4 [= =] and [. .]

Perl recognizes the POSIX character classes C<[=class=]> and
C<[.class.]>, but does not (yet?) support them.  Any attempt to use 
either construct raises an exception.

=head4 Examples

 /[[:digit:]]/            # Matches a character that is a digit.
 /[01[:lower:]]/          # Matches a character that is either a
                          # lowercase letter, or '0' or '1'.
 /[[:digit:][:^xdigit:]]/ # Matches a character that can be anything
			  # except the letters 'a' to 'f'.  This is
			  # because the main character class is composed
			  # of two POSIX character classes that are ORed
			  # together, one that matches any digit, and
			  # the other that matches anything that isn't a
			  # hex digit.  The result matches all
			  # characters except the letters 'a' to 'f' and
			  # 'A' to 'F'.


=head2 Locale, EBCDIC, Unicode and UTF-8

Some of the character classes have a somewhat different behaviour
depending on the internal encoding of the source string, whether the regular
expression is marked as having Unicode semantics, whatever locale is in
effect, and whether the program is running on an EBCDIC platform.

C<\w>, C<\d>, C<\s> and the POSIX character classes (and their
negations, including C<\W>, C<\D>, C<\S>) have this behaviour.  (Since
the backslash sequences C<\b> and C<\B> are defined in terms of C<\w>
and C<\W>, they also are affected.)

Starting in Perl 5.14, if the regular expression is compiled with the
C<"a"> modifier, the behavior doesn't differ regardless of any other
factors.  C<\d> matches the 10 digits 0-9; C<\D> any character but those
10; C<\s>, exactly the five characters "[ \f\n\r\t]"; C<\w> only the 63
characters "[A-Za-z0-9_]"; and the C<"[[:posix:]]"> classes only the
appropriate ASCII characters, the same characters as are matched by the
corresponding C<\p{}> property given in the "ASCII-range Unicode" column
in the table above.  (The behavior of all of their complements follows
the same paradigm.)

Otherwise, a regular expression is marked for Unicode semantics if it is
encoded in utf8 (usually as a result of including a literal character
whose code point is above 255), or if it contains a C<\N{U+...}> or
C<\N{I<name>}> construct, or (starting in Perl 5.14) if it was compiled
in the scope of a C<S<use feature "unicode_strings">> pragma and not in
the scope of a C<S<use locale>> pragma, or has the C<"u"> regular
expression modifier.

Note that one can specify C<"use re '/l'"> for example, for any regular
expression modifier, and this has precedence over either of the
C<S<use feature "unicode_strings">> or C<S<use locale>> pragmas.

The differences in behavior between locale and non-locale semantics
can affect any character whose code point is 255 or less.  The
differences in behavior between Unicode and non-Unicode semantics
affects only ASCII platforms, and only when matching against characters
whose code points are between 128 and 255 inclusive.  See
L<perlunicode/The "Unicode Bug">.

For portability reasons, unless the C<"a"> modifier is specified,
it may be better to not use C<\w>, C<\d>, C<\s> or the POSIX character
classes and use the Unicode properties instead.

That way you can control whether you want matching of characters in
the ASCII character set alone, or whether to match Unicode characters.
C<S<use feature "unicode_strings">> allows seamless Unicode behavior
no matter the internal encodings, but won't allow restricting
to ASCII characters only.

=head4 Examples

 $str =  "\xDF";      # $str is not in UTF-8 format.
 $str =~ /^\w/;       # No match, as $str isn't in UTF-8 format.
 $str .= "\x{0e0b}";  # Now $str is in UTF-8 format.
 $str =~ /^\w/;       # Match! $str is now in UTF-8 format.
 chop $str;
 $str =~ /^\w/;       # Still a match! $str remains in UTF-8 format.

=cut
