Regular expression for matching HH:MM time format

Question

I want a regexp for matching time in HH:MM format. Here\'s what I have, and it works:

^[0-2][0-3]:[0-5][0-9]$

This matches everything from

Answer 1

You can use following regex :

^[0-2]?[0-3]:[0-5][0-9]$

Only modification I have made is leftmost digit is optional. Rest of the regex is same.

Answer 2

You can use this one 24H, seconds are optional

^([0-1]?[0-9]|[2][0-3]):([0-5][0-9])(:[0-5][0-9])?$

Answer 3

As you asked the left most bit optional, I have done left most and right most bit optional too, check it out

^([0-9]|0[0-9]|1[0-9]|2[0-3]):[0-5][0-9]?$

It matches with

0:0 
00:00
00:0 
0:00
23:59
01:00
00:59

The live link is available here

Answer 4

Declare

private static final String TIME24HOURS_PATTERN = "([01]?[0-9]|2[0-3]):[0-5][0-9]:[0-5][0-9]";

public boolean validate(final String time) {
    pattern = Pattern.compile(TIME24HOURS_PATTERN);
    matcher = pattern.matcher(time);
    return matcher.matches();
}

This method return "true" when String match with the Regular Expression.

Answer 5

Mine is:

^(1?[0-9]|2[0-3]):[0-5][0-9]$

This is much shorter

Got it tested with several example

Match:

• 00:00
• 7:43
• 07:43
• 19:00
• 18:23

And doesn't match any invalid instance such as 25:76 etc ...

Answer 6

Amazingly I found actually all of these don't quite cover it, as they don't work for shorter format midnight of 0:0 and a few don't work for 00:00 either, I used and tested the following:

^([0-9]|0[0-9]|1?[0-9]|2[0-3]):[0-5]?[0-9]$