How do I specify a range of unicode characters

How do I specify a range of unicode characters from ' ' (space) to \u00D7FF?

I have a regular expression like r'[\u0020-\u00D7FF]' and it won't compile saying that it's a bad range. I am new to Unicode regular expressions so I haven't had this problem before.

Is there a way to make this compile or a regular expression that I'm forgetting or haven't learned yet?

Solution

The syntax of your unicode range will not do what you expect.

The raw r'' string prevents \u escapes from being parsed, and the regex engine will not do this. The only range in this set is [0-\]:

>>> re.compile(r'[\u0020-\u00d7ff]', re.DEBUG)
in
  literal 117
  literal 48
  literal 48
  literal 50
  range (48, 117)
  literal 48
  literal 48
  literal 100
  literal 55
  literal 102
  literal 102

Making it a Unicode literal causes \u parsing while leaving other backslashes alone (although that’s not a concern here), but the leading zeroes are messing it up. The syntax is \uxxxx or \Uxxxxxxxx, so it’s parsed as "\u00d7, f, f".
```
>>> re.compile(ur'[\u0020-\u00d7ff]', re.DEBUG)
in
  range (32, 215)
  literal 102
  literal 102
```

Removing the leading zeroes or switching to \U0000d7ff will fix it:

>>> re.compile(ur'[\u0020-\ud7ff]', re.DEBUG)
in
  range (32, 55295)