EpochLab

Time String Validator

Is this a valid time string?

Checks a time of day against the standard — including the edge cases that are legal and surprising, like 24:00 and the leap-second 23:59:60.

Questions people ask

The things that come up about time string validators, answered plainly.

Is 24:00 a valid time?

Yes, in ISO 8601 — it means midnight at the end of a day, and is the same instant as 00:00 the next day. Many parsers reject it, and RFC 3339 does not allow it, so it is valid and best avoided.

Is 23:59:60 valid?

Yes — it is a leap second, and both ISO 8601 and RFC 3339 permit it. It has occurred 27 times since 1972. Most software rejects it, and Unix time cannot represent it at all.

Related tools

Julian days, Excel serials, GPS time, cron expressions and format validators.

All 160 tools · More in converters & validators