Question

I need a regex, which matches a single time value as well as lists of time values in the format hhmm[, hhmm] like for example:

“1245” or “0056, 1034,2355”

I am not so good with regex.. I thought this would do it:

(([0-1][0-9])|(2[0-3]))[0-5][0-9](,[ \t]*(([0-1][0-9])|(2[0-3]))[0-5][0-9])*

single time values are validated correctly, but if I try lists of times, every number behind the comma is accepted. It matches also “1235, 4711”.
Can someone give me a hint what i am doing wrong?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

$pat = qr/(?:2[0-3]|[01][0-9])[0-5][0-9]/;
while (<DATA>) {
    if (/^$pat(,\s*$pat)*$/) {
        print;
    }
}

__DATA__
1245
0056, 1034,2355
1034,2455