Python supports no Unicode properties in its re library, making it unsuitable for work with Unicode. This is therefore a formal request for the Python re library to support Unicode properties.

 The eleven properties required by Unicode Technical Report #18's RL1.2 are the bare minimum which must be added to make it possible to use Python reguyar expressions on Unicode. 

The proposed RL2.7 on Full Properties is even better.  That is found at

  http://unicode.org/reports/tr18/proposed.html#Full_Properties

Although by the time you read this, it will have been made an official part of tr18.

Matthew Barnett's replacement library for re, called regex, support 67 Unicode properties at last count, including the strongly recommended loose matching.  

The standard re library needs to be spiffed up to make it suitable for Unicode processing; it is not currently usable for that due to this missing functionality.  I quote from the Level 1 conformance requirement of tr18:
    
    "Level 1: This is a minimal level for useful Unicode support. It does not account for end-user expectations for character support, but does satisfy most low-level programmer requirements. The results of regular expression matching at this level are independent of country or language. At this level, the user of the regular expression engine would need to write more complicated regular expressions to do full Unicode processing."

pass RL1.1 Hex Notation
fail RL1.2 Properties
fail RL1.2a Compatibility Properties
fail RL1.3 Subtraction and Intersection
fail RL1.4 Simple Word Boundaries
fail RL1.5 Simple Loose Matches
fail RL1.6 Line Boundaries
fail RL1.7 Supplementary Code Points

(withdrawn) RL2.1 Canonical Equivalents
fail RL2.2 Extended Grapheme Clusters
fail RL2.3 Default Word Boundaries
fail RL2.4 Default Case Conversion
pass RL2.5 Name Properties
fail RL2.6 Wildcards in Property Values
fail RL2.7 Full Properties

I won’t even talk about Level 3.  

ICU, Perl, and Java7 all meet Level One conformance requirements with several Level 2 requirements also met.  It is important for Python to meet the Unicode Standard in this so that people can use Python for regex matching Unicode text.  They currently cannot usefully do so per the requirements of tr18.