Question

I am trying to write a simple script that convert the first field of a line in universal time.

 import java.util.*;
 import java.text.*;
 import java.io.*;
 public class StringToDate {
 public static void main(String[] argv) {
   if (argv.length != 1) {
        System.err.println("Usage: java StringToDate file.in");
        System.exit(1);
    }


try { 
    FileInputStream fstream = new FileInputStream(argv[1]);
    String delims = "[,]+";
    DataInputStream in = new DataInputStream(fstream);
    BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(in));
    String strLine;
    while ((strLine = br.readLine()) != null)   {
    String[] tokens = strLine.split(delims);
    DateFormat formatter ; 
    long epoch = new java.text.SimpleDateFormat ("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss").parse(tokens[0]).getTime();

    System.out.println(String.valueOf(epoch)+',' +tokens[1]+'\n');
      }
    //Close the input stream
    in.close();
    } 
    catch (Exception e){System.err.println("Error: " + e.getMessage());} 

}
 } 

the file is in the form:

 2012-02-12 17:00:00,(Sun) Kardemir Karabukspor v Fenerbahce

two questions:

1) why this code is unable open the file when i put argv[1] as argument?

2) why the universal time is a completely wrong number? i.e. the output is

 1329062400000,(Sun) Kardemir Karabukspor v Fenerbahce

namely the universaletime is three 0’s longer (actually has to be 1329062400).

Answer 1

1) You’ve ensured your array only has a single item, so it’s argv[0], not argv[1]. Arrays always start at element 0 in Java.

2) Date.getTime() returns milliseconds since the epoch, not seconds. If you want seconds, divide by 1000. The value looks fine to me, when viewed as milliseconds…