Question

I am trying to compare two dates. My first date is:

Date previousDate ="Returns a date as 2011-12-09 in a gregorian date"

and the second date is my “current date”, where I am getting my current date as:

SimpleDateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy/mm/dd");
Date date=new Date();

When I am try to compare the current date with my previous date, I am only able to compare the year (or only the first thing in the pattern).

System.out.println("date"+previousDate.compareto(format(date));

I am able to get the out put as “1”, as it is only comparing the year but not whole date.
Can any of you guys figure out what i am missing.I tried many approaches but couldn’t succeed.please let me know if i can work out with this or i need a different solution.

Thanks.

Answer 1

By

SimpleDateFormat(yyyy/mm/dd);

I guess you mean

SimpleDateFormat("yyyy/MM/dd");

But the important point is that by convention compareTo usually returns -1, 0 or 1.

Here’s the implementation of Date#compareTo :

974     public int compareTo(Date anotherDate) {
975         long thisTime = getMillisOf(this);
976         long anotherTime = getMillisOf(anotherDate);
977         return (thisTime<anotherTime ? -1 : (thisTime==anotherTime ? 0 : 1));
978     }