#!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; # Also tried with this, but with no better results use POSIX qw/locale_h/; setlocale(LC_CTYPE, "pt_PT.ISO8859-1"); my @words = qw/η q αγη abc/; foreach (@words) { $_ =~/[[:alpha:]]/ ? print "$_ : OK!\n" : print "$_ : NOT OK!\n"; $_ =~/\w+/ ? print "$_ : OK!\n" : print "$_ : NOT OK!\n"; } #### η : NOT OK! η : NOT OK! q : OK! q : OK! αγη : NOT OK! αγη : NOT OK! abc : OK! abc : OK!