`\p{...}` names ignore only spaces, though the docs promise whitespace
@serhiy-storchaka is already working on this.
Since Aug 21, 2026.
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Description
Bug description:
Doc/library/re.rst says of the \p{property=value} escape: "Property and value names are matched loosely: case, whitespace, '-' and '_' are ignored." _normalize() in Lib/re/_properties.py removes only U+0020, so a property or value name spelled with a tab, newline, carriage return, vertical tab or form feed is rejected.
import re
for name in ['L u', 'L\tu']:
try:
re.compile(r'\p{%s}' % name)
print(repr(name), 'accepted')
except re.PatternError as e:
print(repr(name), 'rejected:', e.msg)
'L u' accepted
'L\tu' rejected: unknown property name 'L\tu'
Expected: both accepted, since the documentation says whitespace is ignored. UAX #44 UAX44-LM3, cited by _normalize()'s own comment, says to ignore whitespace rather than spaces.
Either side can change: narrow the documentation to "spaces", or strip \t\n\v\f\r in _normalize() to match UAX44-LM3. \p{...} is new in 3.16 and has not shipped, and the only user-visible effect either way is which spellings raise PatternError at compile time.
CPython versions tested on:
CPython main branch
Operating systems tested on:
Linux
Linked PRs
- gh-156304
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