Question

I am really confused with the SimpleDateFormat object. Here is the code :

SimpleDateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("DDHHmm MMM yy", Locale.ENGLISH);

String dateString = "312230 MAR 10";
try 
{
    Date date = (Date)formatter.parse(dateString);
    System.out.println("Original string: " + dateString);
    System.out.println("Parsed date    : " + date.toString());
}
catch (ParseException e) 
{
    System.out.println("ERROR: could not parse date in string \"" +
                dateString + "\"");
}

and this is the output :

Original string: 312230 MAR 10
Parsed date    : Sun Jan 31 22:30:00 EST 2010

I really expected the output to be

Parsed date    : Wed Mar 31 22:30:00 EST 2010

Can someone please point out what I am doing wrong? It would be deeply appreciated. I am using java 1.6_27.

Answer 1

Change the simpleDateFormat pattern by “ddHHmm MMM yy” return the expected output

Original string: 312230 MAR 10
Parsed date    : Wed Mar 31 22:30:00 CEST 2010

DD on uppercase means day of year. In your example day 31 is in January, how your output, and not in March