The data I'm working with will all be UTF-8, if that makes a difference.

That makes a huge difference. \w will match just the 26 letters (both cases), 10 digits and the underscore if your strings aren't in UTF-8 format (unless you have a locale). Otherwise, it will match anything that's a Unicode letter, Unicode digit or underscore.

However, since there's this dependency on whether the string you match against is in UTF-8 format or not, I'd shy away from UTF-8. Instead, use \p{L} which will match any character the Unicode standard says is a letter. So, you'd get:

if (/^(\p{L}+)$/) {say "found [$1]"}
[download]

---

---

Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!

Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.

Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.

Please read these before you post! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:

a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr

You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)

	For:		Use:
	&		&
	<		&lt;
	>		&gt;
	[		&#91;
	]		&#93;

Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?

See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.