title: REGEX for alphabetic character in any alphabet, excluding everything else
body: <p>I need a regex to match a letter of any alphabet, but not a number or punctuation. I have tried things like:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$match = "~\b(,\s?\b)*$~";
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and</p>
  
  <pre><code>$match = "~\w+(,\s?\w+)*$~";
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But both let in dashes etc</p>
  
  <p>I even tried to write an exclusion like <code>[^0-9 -+,.*&amp;]</code> but it was a nightmare trying to escape the escaped etc. Any help gratefully received.</p>
  
  <p>Note: This follows on from yesterday's quesiton on the comma seperated list: <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6828034/validate-comma-seperated-list-using-regex">validate comma separated list using regex</a> </p>
  
  <p>This:</p>
  
  <pre><code> $value = '[A-Z]+';
  $match = "~^$value(,\s?$value)*$~i";
  
             if (!empty($associations) &amp;&amp; !preg_match($match,$associations))
  
  //return error, not comma seperated list of words
  }
  else {
  // go ahead
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But then the client asked that it match umlauts</p>