However desireable it would be, I do not believe there is any claim in the manual that the re module follows the evolving Unicode consortium r.e. standard. If I understand, you are saying that this statement in the doc, "Matches Unicode word characters;" is not now correct and should be revised. Was it once correct? Could we add "by an older definition of 'word' character"?

There has been some discussion of adding regex to the stdlib, possibly as a replacement for re. You posts indicate that regex is more improved then some realized, and hence has more incompatibilities that we realized, and hence is less suitable as a strictly backwards-compatible replacement. So I think it needs to be looked at as a parallel addition. I do not know Mathew's current position on the subject.