Converting SimpleDateFormat date format to Regular Expression

Is there a generic way to convert the SimpleDateFormat date format to a regular expression开发者_JAVA技巧 in Java?

For simple expressions you can just do

String dateFormat = "yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm:ss.SSS";
String regexFormat = dateFormat.replaceAll("[mHsSdMy]", "\\d");

However to produce something which validates is far more complex. e.g. when MM=03, dd must be between 01 and 31, however when MM=02, dd must between 01 and 28 or 29 (depending on the year)

If you use MMM, DDD, ZZZ its much more complex and locale dependant.

No, nothing ready-to-use. And regex does not have knowledge about date constraints - for example what GMT is, or what am/pm is. For simplest cases you can use \d{2}-\{2}-\d{4} (dd-MM-yyyy), otherwise stick to SimpleDateFormat (or joda-time DateTimeFormat)