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

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.