re.compile(r"\N{name of Unicode Named Character Sequence}"), e.g. re.compile(r"\N{KEYCAP NUMBER SIGN}"), throws a TypeError. The regular expression parser relies on 'unicodedata' to lookup character names. The 'unicodedata' module recently added support for Unicode Named Character Sequences (https://www.unicode.org/Public/13.0.0/ucd/NamedSequences.txt). Trying to use these named character sequences in a regular expression leads to a 'TypeError', as the regexp parser tries to call 'ord' on a string with length > 1.