title: Java: how to check if character belongs to a specific unicode block?
body: <p>I need to identify what natural language my input belongs to. 
  The goal is to distinguish between <em>Arabic</em> and <em>English</em> words in a mixed input, where the input is Unicode and is extracted from XML text nodes.
  I have noticed the class <code>Character.UnicodeBlock</code>.  Is it related to my problem? How can I get it to work?</p>
  
  <p><strong>Edit:</strong> 
       The <code>Character.UnicodeBlock</code> approach was useful for Arabic, but apparently doesn't do it for English (or other European languages) because the <code>BASIC_LATIN</code> Unicode block covers symbols and non-printable characters as well as letters.
  So now I am using the <code>matches()</code> method of the <code>String</code> object with the regex expression <code>"[A-Za-z]+"</code> instead. I can live with it, but perhaps someone can suggest a nicer/faster way.</p>