This is mostly a Ruby thing, and partly a Rails thing. I'm expecting a validate_format_of with a regex like this /^[a-zA-Z\xC0-\xD6\xD9-\xF6\xF9-\xFF\.\'\-\ ]*?$/ to allow many of the normal characters like ö é Ã¥ to be submitted via web form. However, the extended characters are being rejected. This works just fine though (which is just a-zA-Z) /^[\x41-\x5A\x61-\x7A\.\'\-\ ]*?$/ It also seems to fail with full \x0000 numbers, is there limit at \xFF? Some plain Ruby tests seem to suggest unicode characters don't work at all?? p 'abvHgtwHFuG'.scan(/[a-z]/) p 'abvHgtwHFuG'.scan(/[A-Z]/) p 'abvHgtwHFuG'.scan(/[\x41-\x5A]/) p 'abvHgtwHFuG'.scan(/[\x61-\x7A]/) p 'a¥Æ¥¥bvH¥Æ¥«gt¥Æ¡¦wH¥Æ©§uG'.scan(/[\xC0-\xD6\xD9-\xF6\xF9-\xFF]/) ["a", "b", "v", "g", "t", "w", "u"] ["H", "H", "F", "G"] ["H", "H", "F", "G"] ["a", "b", "v", "g", "t", "w", "u"] ["\303", "\303", "\303", "\303"] So, what's the secret to using unicode character ranges in Ruby regex (or Rails validations)? -- def gw acts_as_n00b writes_at(www.railsdev.ws) end -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.