Why does \w match only English words in javascript regex?

Question

I\'m trying to find URLs in some text, using javascript code. The problem is, the regular expression I\'m using uses \\w to match letters and digits inside the URL, but it d

Answer 1

Note that URIs (as superset of URLs) are specified by W3C to only allow US-ASCII characters. Normally all other characters should be represented by percent-notation:

In local or regional contexts and with improving technology, users might benefit from being able to use a wider range of characters; such use is not defined by this specification. Percent-encoded octets (Section 2.1) may be used within a URI to represent characters outside the range of the US-ASCII coded character set if this representation is allowed by the scheme or by the protocol element in which the URI is referenced. Such a definition should specify the character encoding used to map those characters to octets prior to being percent-encoded for the URI. // URI: Generic Syntax

Which is what generally happens when you open an URL with non-ASCII characters in browser, they get translated into %AB notation, which, in turn, is US-ASCII.

If it is possible to influence the way the material is created, the best option would be to subject URLs to urlencode() type function during their creation.