Question

I have the following regular expression for checking the time format HHMM

([0-1][0-9]|[2][0-3])([0-5][0-9])

This works perfect, but now I faced a problem with my application. It requires that the result of the upper expression returns the time in only one group, not in two. Is there a possibility to bundle parts of the regular expression without grouping them?

Thanks in advance …

Answer 1

Yes, use non-capturing parentheses:

(?:[01][0-9]|2[0-3])(?:[0-5][0-9])

You can of course enclose the entire regex in a capturing group if your app requires at least one group.