regex: validate european date format with multiple separators

Question

I want to validate european date formats like \"10.02.2012\" or \"10-02-2012\". Therefore I created the following regex:

/\\d[0-9]{2}(.|-)\\d[0-9]{2}(.|-)\\d         


        

Answer 1

ok I see your problem...

/\d[0-9]{2}(.|-)\d[0-9]{2}(.|-)\d[0-9]{4}/

is redundant, in that \d is the same as [0-9], so actually here you are matching for 3 digits not 2. Try

/\d{2}(\.|-)\d{2}(\.|-)\d{4}/

or

/[0-9]{2}(\.|-)[0-9]{2}(\.|-)[0-9]{4}/

but don't use both

Answer 2

Note that the answers provided so far using the \d character class will allow dates such as 00.00.0000 or 99.99.9999 to pass through. If you want to catch this, you need to use a more specific regex. The one below would allow valid dates between 01.01.1900 and 31.12.2099

^([1-9]|0[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])[-\.]([1-9]|0[1-9]|1[012])[-\.](19|20)\d\d$

If you want to allow any year from 0000 to 9999, then you could change it to

^([1-9]|0[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])[-\.]([1-9]|0[1-9]|1[012])[-\.]\d{4}$

Answer 3

It works correctly after minor modifications :

\d{2}(\.|-)\d{2}(\.|-)\d{4}

1. the "." needs to be escaped.

2. \d is same as [0-9] , no need to repeat it.

http://regexr.com?326f2