正则表达式匹配时间范围

Question

I am trying to create a regular expression for parsing and validation of time ranges in Javascript. Keep in mind that I am simply looking to parse correctly structured strings of characters. The validation logic regarding the time ranges is made afterward

Requirements:

1. Time elements are expressed always in 24 hour and should be of (HH:mm) format.
2. Time range is defined as 2 time elements separated by a dash
3. String should at least have one timerange or more separated by comma
4. Matching pattern should tolerate spaces between elements
5. The validated string should either match as a whole or completely fail to match

What I came up is the following:

/((?:[01]\d:[0-5][0-9]|2[0-3]:[0-5][0-9])(?:\s?)-(?:\s?)(?:[01]\d:[0-5][0-9]|2[0-3]:[0-5][0-9])(?:\s?,\s?)?)/g

which seems to satisfy all the rules apart from rule 5. ie. if incorrect characters exist they simply not match but the expression does not fail as a whole

is there any way to embed rule 5 inside this regex?

Answer 1

Add the anchors to mark start and end of string:

^((?:[01]\\d:[0-5][0-9]|2[0-3]:[0-5][0-9])(?:\\s?)-(?:\\s?)(?:[01]\\d:[0-5][0-9]|2[0-3]:[0-5][0-9])(?:\\s?,\\s?)?)+$ ( demo )

Then, grab the whole match, and then split by , .