Regular Expression Match to test for a valid year

Question

Given a value I want to validate it to check if it is a valid year. My criteria is simple where the value should be an integer with 4 characters. I know this is not the best solution as it will not allow years before 1000 and will allow years such as 5000. This criteria is adequate for my current scenario.

What I came up with is

\d{4}$

While this works it also allows negative values.

How do I ensure that only positive integers are allowed?

Answer 1

Years from 1000 to 2999

^[12][0-9]{3}$

For 1900-2099

^(19|20)\d{2}$

Answer 2

You need to add a start anchor ^ as:

^\d{4}$

Your regex \d{4}$ will match strings that end with 4 digits. So input like -1234 will be accepted.

By adding the start anchor you match only those strings that begin and end with 4 digits, which effectively means they must contain only 4 digits.

Answer 3

The "accepted" answer to this question is both incorrect and myopic.

It is incorrect in that it will match strings like 0001, which is not a valid year.

It is myopic in that it will not match any values above 9999. Have we already forgotten the lessons of Y2K? Instead, use the regular expression:

^[1-9]\d{3,}$

If you need to match years in the past, in addition to years in the future, you could use this regular expression to match any positive integer:

^[1-9]\d*$

Even if you don't expect dates from the past, you may want to use this regular expression anyway, just in case someone invents a time machine and wants to take your software back with them.

Note: This regular expression will match all years, including those before the year 1, since they are typically represented with a BC designation instead of a negative integer. Of course, this convention could change over the next few millennia, so your best option is to match any integer—positive or negative—with the following regular expression:

^-?[1-9]\d*$

Answer 4

This works for 1900 to 2099:

/(?:(?:19|20)[0-9]{2})/