Regular Expressions 101

Pro

1st Alternative^[\p{L}\p{M}]+([\p{L}\p{Pd}\p{Zs}'.]*[\p{L}\p{M}])+$

^start of line

Character Class[\p{L}\p{M}]+

+matches at least one character from the set below:

\p{L}any Unicode letter

\p{M}a combining mark

Group 1([\p{L}\p{Pd}\p{Zs}'.]*[\p{L}\p{M}])+

+repeats the group contents below at least once:

Character Class[\p{L}\p{Pd}\p{Zs}'.]*

*matches any number of characters from the set below:

\p{L}any Unicode letter

\p{Pd}a dash or hyphen punctuation mark

\p{Zs}a space separator with non-zero width

'the literal ' (39₁₀ / 47₈ / 27₁₆)

.the literal . (46₁₀ / 56₈ / 2E₁₆)

Character Class[\p{L}\p{M}]

\p{L}any Unicode letter

\p{M}a combining mark

$end of line

2nd Alternative^[\p{L}\p{M}]+$

^start of line

Character Class[\p{L}\p{M}]+

+matches at least one character from the set below:

\p{L}any Unicode letter

\p{M}a combining mark

$end of line

Global pattern flags

g modifier: global. Finds all matches instead of stopping after the first

m modifier: multiline. Causes ^ and $ to match the start and end of each line, not only the start and end of the string

Ready to run

25 tokens

^[\p{L}\p{M}]+([\p{L}\p{Pd}\p{Zs}'.]*[\p{L}\p{M}])+$|^[\p{L}\p{M}]+$