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

Your code will not work properly as it will not work for 01:00 type formats. You can modify it as follows.

pattern =r"^(0?[1-9]|1[0-2]):[0-5][0-9]$"

Making it less complicated we can use a variable to define our hours limits.Further we can add meridiems for more accurate results.

hours_limit = 12 
pattern = r"^[1-hours_limit]:[0-5][0-9]\s?[AaPp][Mm]$"
print(re.search(pattern, "2:59 pm"))