\w stands for a-z, A-Z, 0-9 and the underscore (_) os it answers your question.
about your second question, of course you can limit the string's length, for example if a username length should be maximum 30 characters long than this will qualify: 
/^[A-Za-z][-.\w]{29}$/

[download]
the first char is mandetory to be alphabetic and the 29 in braces replaces the '+' sign to note exact number of chars.

Hotshot

In reply to Re: Re: Re: stuck on regexp by hotshot
in thread stuck on regexp by jimbobn

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