I think I have finally gone nutty… regular expressions just will not click for me. 
I need a pattern that strictly limits the user to:
MM/DD/YYYY format
0or1 0-2 / 0-3 0-9 / 2 0or1 0-9 0-9
Does that make any sense? I would appreciate some insight on putting this badboy together. Thank you
I am getting somewhere, but it still allows an invalid date to be entered, for instance:
18-22-2005
Help, please. 
<?php
$pattern = "/([0-1]{1})([0-9]{1})-([0-3]{1})([0-9]{1})-([2]{1})([0-1]{1})([0-9]{2})/"; // 2digSEP2digSEP4dig
if(preg_match($pattern, $_GET['dBegin'])){;
echo "valid date<br/>";
}else{
echo "invalid date<br/>";
}
?>
Unknown modifier '['
Thank you for helping though… it’s probably something I am goofing up at this point.
Could someone please post the proper pattern, and explain it in plain english.
I want the end-user to have to input a valid date in the following format:
MM-DD-YYYY
valid meaning no 14-35-200777
I’d really appreciate it… as it’s making me nuts… getting up for a beather might help though. 
Sorry, forgot brackets. Also ive taken out the . seperator as you don’t require them.
Try this in your $pattern
$pattern = "((0[1-9]|1[012])[-](0[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])[-](19|20)\\d\\d)";
Explaination:
( (0[1-9]|1[012]) [-] (0[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01]) [-] (19|20)\d\d )
Front and rear bracket just enclose the expression.
(0[1-9]|1[012]) Zero followed by a One to Nine OR One followed by a Zero One or Two
[-] must be character -
(0[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01]) Zero followed by a One to Nine OR a One or a Two followed by a Zero to Nine OR a Three followed by a Zero or One
[-] must be character -
(19|20)\d\d ) Nineteen OR Twenty followed by two decimal numbers
Terry