Validation by alpha fails if the field contains spaces

[akobrina]

The regular expression for the alpha rule looks as follows:
!preg_match("/^([a-zÀÁÂÃÄÅÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÒÓÔÕÖÙÚÛÜÝàáâãäåçèéêëìíîïðòóôõöùúûüýÿ])+$/i", $input[$field]

However, this creates a problem if the field contains spaces, e.g. two words. I had to update the code to include the spaces as valid characters to avoid being given an error. Here is my updated reg ex:
!preg_match("/^([a-zÀÁÂÃÄÅÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÒÓÔÕÖÙÚÛÜÝàáâãäåçèéêëìíîïðòóôõöùúûüýÿ\s])+$/i", $input[$field]

[sn]

There's a validator called alpha_space that will do this exact thing. Have you tried it?