#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; use locale; use POSIX qw/locale_h/; setlocale(LC_CTYPE, "fr_FR.ISO8859-1"); my @words = qw/יטח q יאח abc/; foreach (@words) { $_ =~/[[:alpha:]]/ ? print "$_ : OK!\n" : print "$_ : NOT OK!\n"; $_ =~/\w+/ ? print "$_ : OK!\n" : print "$_ : NOT OK!\n"; }