Question

I have a date string in the following format:

Thu Oct 20 14:39:19 PST 2011

I would like to parse it using DateFormat to get a Date object. I’m trying it like this:

DateFormat df = DateFormat.getDateTimeInstance(DateFormat.MEDIUM, DateFormat.SHORT);
Date date = df.parse(dateString);

This gives a ParseException (“unparseable date”).

I’ve also tried this:

SimpleDateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("EEE-MMM-dd HH:mm:ss z yyyy");

with the same results.

Is that the right SimpleDateFormat string? Is there a better way to parse this date?

Answer 1

The issue was that I was trying to parse an English date while in the French locale.

This was resolved by using this instead:

SimpleDateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss z yyyy", Locale.CANADA);