Question

After looking after several existing posts, I am still not able to get my SimpleDateFormat parser working. Here is the code:

SimpleDateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat(
    "EEE, dd MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss Z", Locale.US);
try {
    volcanoListDate = df.parse(currentValue);
} catch (ParseException e) {
    Log.d("DEBUG", e.toString());
    Log.d("DEBUG", currentValue);
}

I always end up with a ParseException. Here is the output of the debug messages:

06-09 23:52:17.478: DEBUG/DEBUG(2436): java.text.ParseException: Unparseable date:
06-09 23:52:17.478: DEBUG/DEBUG(2436): Wed, 08 Jun 2011 03:23:55 -0500

Locale ist set and the pattern looks okay. Where am I wrong?

Answer 1

Here is the solution:

            SimpleDateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("EEE, dd MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss Z", Locale.US);
        try {
            volcanoListDate = df.parse(currentValue.replaceAll("\\p{Cntrl}", ""));
        } catch (ParseException e) {
            Log.d("VOLCANO_DEBUG", e.toString());
            Log.d("VOLCANO_DEBUG", currentValue);
        }

The important change is .replaceAll(“\\p{Cntrl}”, “”) which removes control characters from the parsed string.
The strange thing is, that I do not see any of those characters with Notepad++ in the xml where the string is from. However, obviously there is something and it is working now.

Thanks for all the help!