Regex pattern using w.* not matching text starting with foreign characters such as Ä

Question

I have the following regex that I have been using successfully:

preg_match_all('/(\d+)\n(\w.*)\n(\d{3}\.\d{3}\.\d{2})\n(\d.*)\n(\d.*)/', $text, $matches)

However I have just found that if the text that the (\w.*) part matches starts with a foreign character such as Ä, then it doesn't match anything.

Can anyone help me with what the correct pattern should be instead of (\w.*) to match a string that starts with any character?

Many thanks

Answer 1

If you do want to match umlauts, then add the regex /u modifier, or use \pL in place of \w. That will allow the regex to match letters outside of the ASCII range.

Reference: http://www.regular-expressions.info/unicode.html
and http://php.net/manual/en/regexp.reference.unicode.php

Answer 2

Ä is a German Umlaut if I am not mistaken. \w Matches (in most flavors) [a-zA-Z0-9_].

You will need to match the unicode range of characters that you want.

\x{00C4} (php) equals the character you want. You will probably need to create a character class to support your unicode characters.