Regular expression for matching HH:MM time format

Question

I want a regexp for matching time in HH:MM format. Here\'s what I have, and it works:

^[0-2][0-3]:[0-5][0-9]$

This matches everything from

Answer 1

As you asked the left most bit optional, I have done left most and right most bit optional too, check it out

^([0-9]|0[0-9]|1[0-9]|2[0-3]):[0-5][0-9]?$

It matches with

0:0 
00:00
00:0 
0:00
23:59
01:00
00:59

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