Pattern

Regex for Letters only

String of letters only (A–Z, a–z).

The Letters only regex is ^[A-Za-z]+$ — copy it below, or open it in the explainer for a token-by-token breakdown.

The pattern

^[A-Za-z]+$

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What it matches

Hello
abc
XYZ

What it doesn't match

Hello123
Hello World
Hëllo

Notes & gotchas

ASCII letters only. For Unicode letters (including accented characters and other scripts), use ^\p{Letter}+$ with the /u flag.

Code in your language

Use the explainer's Code tab to generate ready-to-paste snippets in JavaScript, Python, Java, .NET, Go, Ruby, and PHP for this pattern.

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Token-by-token breakdown

Every part of the pattern, left to right:

Token	Meaning
`^`	start of string (or line in multiline mode)
`[A-Za-z]+`	one or more: any of: uppercase letters, lowercase letters
`$`	end of string (or line in multiline mode)

About this pattern

Number patterns appear constantly in form validation, log parsing, and data extraction. Regex is great for matching the shape but limited for semantic checks (range validation, mathematical constraints).

Quick usage in different languages

This exact pattern — with the correct escaping and idioms for each language:

JavaScript: /^[A-Za-z]+$/.test(value)
Python: re.match(r"^[A-Za-z]+$", value)
Java: Pattern.compile("^[A-Za-z]+$").matcher(value).matches()
C# / .NET: Regex.IsMatch(value, @"^[A-Za-z]+$")
Go: regexp.MustCompile(`^[A-Za-z]+$`).MatchString(value)
Ruby: /^[A-Za-z]+$/.match?(value)
PHP: preg_match('~^[A-Za-z]+$~', $value)

The explainer’s Code tab regenerates these for any pattern you paste, and the downloadable cheat sheet bundles the breakdown, all seven snippets, and the pitfalls below onto one printable page.

Common pitfalls

Anchored to the whole string. This pattern uses ^ and $, so it requires the entire input to match. To find it inside a longer text, drop the anchors and use the global (g) flag.
ASCII letters only. [a-zA-Z] excludes accented and non-Latin letters (é, ü, ß, ñ, and non-Latin scripts). For international input use Unicode properties like \p{L} with the u flag.
Validate beyond format. Matching the format doesn't guarantee the value is real. Confirm the letters only against a source of truth (database, API, or checksum) where it matters.

Related patterns

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