Accent in Regular Expression in Java

Question

I'd like to use Hibernate Validator to validate some columns. The problem, as I understand, is that the \w marker in java doesn't accept letters with accents on them.

Is there any way that I could write the regexp so that words like Relatório could be validated (i wouldn't want to write all letters with accents between brackets, because I expect to be writing this regexp in a lot of columns)?

Answer 1

The Java regex documentation has a section on Unicode categories (search for "Classes for Unicode blocks and categories"). If you're just looking for letters, I think \p{L} is the category you want.

Answer 2

I had more luck with:

\p{InCombiningDiacriticalMarks}+

In java I use the following method:

import java.text.Normalizer;
import java.text.Normalizer.Form;

public static String removeAccents(String text) {
    return text == null ? null :
        Normalizer.normalize(text, Form.NFD)
            .replaceAll("\\p{InCombiningDiacriticalMarks}+", "");
}