Regular Expression Match to test for a valid year

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

Answer 1

The "accepted" answer to this question is both incorrect and myopic.

It is incorrect in that it will match strings like 0001, which is not a valid year.

It is myopic in that it will not match any values above 9999. Have we already forgotten the lessons of Y2K? Instead, use the regular expression:

^[1-9]\d{3,}$

If you need to match years in the past, in addition to years in the future, you could use this regular expression to match any positive integer:

^[1-9]\d*$

Even if you don't expect dates from the past, you may want to use this regular expression anyway, just in case someone invents a time machine and wants to take your software back with them.

Note: This regular expression will match all years, including those before the year 1, since they are typically represented with a BC designation instead of a negative integer. Of course, this convention could change over the next few millennia, so your best option is to match any integer—positive or negative—with the following regular expression:

^-?[1-9]\d*$