Q:

Java - Regular expression for date formats?

How do I throw this into a regular expression where MON can be any three letter month and YYYY is the year, etc..?
MON ## - MON ##, YYYY
MON ##, YYY1 - MON ##, YYY2
MO1 ## - MO2 ##, YYYY
MON ## - MON ##, YYYY

A:

I suppose that would be
Pattern.compile
(
    "(Jan|Feb|Mar|Apr|May|Jun|Jul|Aug|Sep|Oct|Nov|Dec) \\d\\d(, \\d\\d\\d\\d)?" +
    " - (Jan|Feb|Mar|Apr|May|Jun|Jul|Aug|Sep|Oct|Nov|Dec) \\d\\d, \\d\\d\\d\\d"
)

(Note: you may need to tweak that to account for things that aren't clear in your question — for example, can the day-of-month be just one digit, or must it be two?)
But I have to wonder if this is the best way to do whatever it is that you're trying to do. Are you familiar with java.text.SimpleDateFormat? (What exactly is it that you're trying to do?)

