Regular Expression to match valid dates

Question

I\'m trying to write a regular expression that validates a date. The regex needs to match the following

• M/D/YYYY
• MM/DD/YYYY
• Single digit mon

Answer 1

A slightly different approach that may or may not be useful for you.

I'm in php.

The project this relates to will never have a date prior to the 1st of January 2008. So, I take the 'date' inputed and use strtotime(). If the answer is >= 1199167200 then I have a date that is useful to me. If something that doesn't look like a date is entered -1 is returned. If null is entered it does return today's date number so you do need a check for a non-null entry first.

Works for my situation, perhaps yours too?