Detects whether a string is (mostly) Arabic (or Farsi, etc.)

detectArabic.js

/*
 * Tries to detects whether a given string is "Arabic" (or Farsi, Pashto, etc.)
 * The detection is based on counting "Arabic alphabet" characters
 * Returns true if the string is mostly made of "Arabic characters", false otherwise
 * This is how to use on HTML element "el":
 * detectArabic(el.innerText)
 */

function detectArabic(string) {
  try  {
    arCount = string.match(/[\u0600-\u06FF]/g).length;
    // results are approximative because whitespace and some ranges of arabic characters are ignored.
    return((string.length / arCount) > .5);
  } catch(e) {
    return(false);
  }
}