I need to create a regex that accepts the following entries:
8:00
8 horas
8h
8h30 (8h 30)
8h30min (8h 30 min)
8h30minutos (8h 30 minutos)
And I came up with the following:
((\d{1,2}:\d{1,2}) | (\d{1,2}\s+\bhoras\b) | (\d{1,2}\bh\b(\s+\d{1,2}(\bminutos\b|\bmin\b)?)?))?
The first two parts work separately, when together with a | does not work. The third part does not work at all.
Why your regex does not work
You've made a lot of mistakes in it, this happens to who's starting, I'm not going to just show you where it went wrong, but explain a better way that I hope will continue going forward, so your regex will not fail anymore.
| ), I know this makes the regex more readable and easy to understand, but that's why it did not work with the other alternatives you put , when it parsed the sequences after the OU tab, it would check if the sequence was started with space. \b ), does the sequence analysis as a word, expecting the last valid character and verifies that it matches perfectly with your pattern ie when you used h it would only find "h" if it had followed by a number or other letter would not capture. )? ), you are making regex only capture this group once or once, so if your regex worked for 1 sequence, it would stop there. h , hora or : "is the minute number, so simply add the word minute after the sequences with h or hora and this will save you time processing and regex.
Regex that works for your cases
(\d{1,2}:\d{1,2})|(\d{1,2}\s+horas{0,1})|(\d{1,2}h ?\d{0,2})