title: Does \w match all alphanumeric characters defined in the Unicode standard?
body: <p><b>Does Perl's <code>\w</code> match all alphanumeric characters defined in the Unicode standard?</b></p>
  
  <p>For example, will <code>\w</code> match all (say) Chinese and Russian alphanumeric characters?</p>
  
  <p>I wrote a simple test script (see below) which suggests that <code>\w</code> does indeed match "as expected" for the non-ASCII alphanumeric characters I tested. But the testing is obviously far from exhaustive.</p>
  
  <pre><code>#!/usr/bin/perl                                                                                                                                                                                                  
  
  use utf8;
  
  binmode(STDOUT, ':utf8');
  
  my @ok;
  $ok[0] = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz";
  $ok[1] = "éèëáàåäöčśžłíżńęøáýąóæšćôı";
  $ok[2] = "şźüęłâi̇ółńśłŕíáυσνχατςęςη";
  $ok[3] = "τσιαιγολοχβςανنيرحبالтераб";
  $ok[4] = "иневоаслкłјиневоцедањеволс";
  $ok[5] = "рглсывызтоμςόκιναςόγο";
  
  foreach my $ok (@ok) {
      die unless ($ok =~ /^\w+$/);
  }
  </code></pre>