Regular expression and dates.

Clamor

Hi all,
I've been having a spot of bother with a regular expression that I need to use. I have a text field that I need to validate the correct formats are as follows
dd/mmm/yyyy
12/feb/2002
('empty')
yes the third one is an empty string. Currently I have the first and second working but cant figure out the empty string, the regular expression i'm using is
([0-9d]{2}\/[A-Za-z]{3}\/[0-9y]{4})
can anyone tell me how to check for the empty string as well
Regards,
Clamor.

dahamsta

Wouldn't it just be:

([0-9d]{2}\/[A-Za-z]{3}\/[0-9y]{4}|)

(Note pipe on the end.)

By the way, your regex will still allow anomalies, people will be able to mix and match, for example with a year like 200y.

adam

Clamor

Good point.
I'll need to tighten it a bit more.
Adding the pipe at the end though allows everything to get through.
I've changed the expression so it now looks like
(^\s*$)|([0-9d]{2}\/[A-Za-z]{3}\/[0-9y]{4})
This catches the empty string or the date format now. I still need to sort out the issue you brought up though.

Clamor

This should work now.
(^\s*$)|([0-9]{2}\/[A-Za-z]{3}\/[0-9]{4})|([d]{2}\/[m]{3}\/[y]{4})