To select UTF-8 mode for the additional escape sequences (\p{xx}, \P{xx}, and \X) , use the "u" modifier (see http://php.net/manual/en/reference.pcre.pattern.modifiers.php).I wondered why a German sharp S (ß) was marked as a control character by \p{Cc} and it took me a while to properly read the first sentence: "Since 5.1.0, three additional escape sequences to match generic character types are available when UTF-8 mode is selected. " :-$ and then to find out how to do so.

An excellent article explaining all these properties can be found here: http://www.regular-expressions.info/unicode.html

Examples are always useful! See https://unicodeplus.com/category for more.C    Other     Cc   Control      (Unicode code points in the ranges U+0000-U+001F and U+007F-U+009F)Cf   Format       (Soft hyphen (U+00AD), zero width space (U+200B), etc.)Cn   Unassigned   (Any code point that is not in the Unicode table)Co   Private use     Cs   Surrogate    (Characters in the range U+D800 to U+DFFF, which are invalid in utf-8)L    LetterLl   Lower case letter (a-z, µßàáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõöøùúûüýþÿ and more)Lm   Modifier letter   (Letter-like characters that are usually combined with others, but here they stand alone:                        ʰʱʲʳʴʵʶʷʸʹʺʻʼʽʾʿˀˁˆˇˈˉˊˋˌˍˎˏːˑˠˡˢˣˤˬˮʹͺՙ and more)Lo   Other letter      (ªºƻǀǁǂǃʔ and many more ideographs and letters from unicase alphabets)Lt   Title case letter (DžLjNjDzᾈᾉᾊᾋᾌᾍᾎᾏᾘᾙᾚᾛᾜᾝᾞᾟᾨᾩᾪᾫᾬᾭᾮᾯᾼῌῼ)Lu   Upper case letter (A-Z, ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÐÑÒÓÔÕÖØÙÚÛÜÝÞ and more)L&   Ordinary letter   (Any character that has the Lu, Ll, or Lt property)M    MarkMc   Spacing mark      (None in latin scripts)Me   Enclosing mark    (Combining enclosing square (U+20DE) like in a⃞ , combining enclosing circle backslash (U+20E0) like in a⃠)Mn   Non-spacing mark  (Combining diacritical marks U+0300-U+036f, like the accents on this letter a: áâãāa̅ăȧäảåa̋ǎa̍a̎ȁa̐ȃ)N    Number      Nd   Decimal number (0123456789, ٠١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩ and digits in many other scripts.)Nl   Letter number  (ⅠⅡⅢⅣⅤⅥⅦⅧⅨⅩⅪⅫⅬⅭⅮⅯⅰⅱⅲⅳⅴⅵⅶⅷⅸⅹⅺⅻⅼⅽⅾⅿ and some more)No   Other number   (⁰¹²³⁴⁵⁶⁷⁸⁹ ₀₁₂₃₄₅₆₇₈₉ ½⅓⅔¼¾⅕⅖⅗⅘⅙⅚⅐⅛⅜⅝⅞⅑⅒ ①②③④⑤⑥⑦⑧⑨⑩⑪⑫⑬⑭⑮⑯⑰⑱⑲⑳, etc.)P    Punctuation      Pc   Connector punctuation (_ underscore (U+005F), ‿ undertie U+203F, ⁀ character tie (U+2040), etc.)Pd   Dash punctuation      (- hyphen-minus (U+002D), ‐ hyphen (U+2010), ‑ non-breaking hyphen (U+2011), ‒ figure dash (U+2012),                            – en dash (U+2013), — em dash (U+2014), ― horizontal bar (U+2015), etc.)Pe   Close punctuation     (right parenthesis, bracket, or brace: `)` (U+0029), `]` (U+005D), `}` (U+007D), etc.) Pf   Final punctuation     (right quotation marks: » (U+00BB), ’ (U+2019), ” (U+201D), etc.)Pi   Initial punctuation   (left  quotation marks: « (U+00AB), ‘ (U+2018), “ (U+201C), etc.)Po   Other punctuation     (!"#%&'*,./:;?@\¡§¶·¿)Ps   Open punctuation      (left parenthesis, bracket, or brace: `(` (U+0028), `[` (U+005B), `{` (U+007B), etc.) S    Symbol      Sc   Currency symbol     ($¢£¤¥, ₠ ₡ ₢ ₣ ₤ ₥ ₦ ₧ ₨ ₩ ₪ ₫ € ₭ ₮ ₯ ₰ ₱ ₲ ₳ ₴ ₵ ₶ ₷ ₸ ₹ ₺ ₻ ₼ ₽ ₾ ₿ (U+20A0-U+20BF), etc.)Sk   Modifier symbol     (Symbol-like characters that are usually combined with others, but here they stand alone:                          ^`¨¯´¸ and more)Sm   Mathematical symbol (+<=>|~¬±×÷϶ and many more)So   Other symbol        (¦ broken bar (U+00A6), © copyright sign (U+00A9), ® registered sign (U+00AE), ° degree sign (U+00B0);                          arrows, signs, emojis and many many more)Z    Separator      Zl   Line separator      (line separator (U+2028))Zp   Paragraph separator (paragraph separator (U+2029))Zs   Space separator     (space, no-break space, en quad, em quad, en space, em space, figure space, thin space, hair space, etc.)

My country, Vietnam, have our own alphabet table:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_alphabetI hope PHP will support better than in Vietnamese.

For those who wonder: 'letter_titlecase' applies to digraphs/trigraphs, where capitalization involves only the first letter. For example, there are three codepoints for the "LJ" digraph in Unicode:   (*) uppercase "LJ": U+01C7   (*) titlecase "Lj": U+01C8   (*) lowercase "lj": U+01C9

these properties are usualy only available if PCRE is compiled with "--enable-unicode-properties"

if you want to match any word but want to provide a fallback, you can do something like that: 

<?php
if(@preg_match_all('/\p{L}+/u', $str, $arr) {
  // fallback goes here
  // for example just '/\w+/u' for a less acurate match
}
?>

Not made clear in the top of page explanation, but these escaped character classes can be included within square brackets to make a broader character class. For example:<?php preg_match( '/[\p{N}\p{L}]+/', $data ) ?>Will match any combination of letters and numbers.