On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 4:39 PM, Ian Cary <ian.cary@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi Mark, > > Would regexp_instr(doc_authors,'[[:alnum:][:blank:][:cntrl:][:punct:]]') > help as I believe this covers ascii(0-127) [:alnum:] also covers non-7bit alphabet letters, so this shouldn't work in the current case. And this does not seem to be affected by NLS_LANGUAGE setting. From 11.2.0.2: SQL> alter session set nls_language='estonian'; Session altered. SQL> select 1 from dual where regexp_instr('õ', '[[:alnum:]]') > 0; 1 ---------- 1 SQL> alter session set nls_language='american'; Session altered. SQL> select 1 from dual where regexp_instr('õ', '[[:alnum:]]') > 0; 1 ---------- 1 -- Ilmar Kerm -- //www.freelists.org/webpage/oracle-l