# Sometimes \w matches U+E9. $ perl -Mfeature=say -e'say "\xE9" =~ /^\w/ || 0' 0 # Sometimes it doesn't. $ perl -Mfeature=say -e'say "\xE9\x{2660}" =~ /^\w/ || 0' 1 # \w always matches U+E9 with "use 5.014;". $ perl -Mfeature=say -e'use 5.014; say "\xE9" =~ /^\w/ || 0' 1 # \p{Word} always matches U+E9, period. $ perl -Mfeature=say -e'say "\xE9" =~ /^\p{Word}/ || 0' 1