PHP Regex validate letters and Spanish accent

Question

How can I add/improvised my code so Spanish accent will be considered as valid in addition to normal alphabet (a-z)

I have the following in my code

public static function IsAlpha($s){
  $reg = "#[^a-z\s-]#i";
  $count = preg_match($reg, $s, $matches);
  return $count == 0;
}

Answer 1

As found in the answer to this question, you could match accented characters using the full Letter Unicode property \p{L}. That includes regular a-z characters along with accented ones, so replace a-z in your expression with this like so:

$reg = "#[^\p{L}\s-]#u";

Note that to use this you need the UTF-8 modifier u after your closing delimiter, as the docs say such Unicode "character types are available when UTF-8 mode is selected".

Answer 2

I think you can use the hexadecimal representation of each letter:

<?php
function IsAlpha($sString)
{

  $reg = "#[a-zA-Z\xE1\xE9\xED\xF3\xFA\xC1\xC9\xCD\xD3\xDA\xF1\xD1]+#i";
  $count = preg_match_all($reg, $sString, $matches, PREG_OFFSET_CAPTURE);
  return $matches;
}
echo '<pre>';
print_r(IsAlpha("abcdefgh ñ á é í ño 123 asd asáéío nmas asllsdasd óúfl ÑABDJÓ ÚñÍÉ"));
echo '</pre>';

I do not know if there are all the letters, but you can add more with this link.