java string to datetime conversion issue

Question

I can't seem to see the problem with the example code below. For some reason seems to be ignoring the year and saying the dates are the same, as can be seen in the output below. I must be missing something simple.

01/28/2006
01/16/2007
Tue Apr 01 00:00:00 PDT 2008
Tue Apr 01 00:00:00 PDT 2008
done

import java.util.*;
import java.text.DateFormat;
import java.text.ParseException;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;

    class ExampleProgram {
      public static void main(String[] args){
        DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yyyy");
        String d1String = "01/28/2006";
        String d2String = "01/16/2007";
        System.out.println(d1String);
        System.out.println(d2String);
        Date d1=null;
        try {
            d1 = df.parse(d1String);
        } catch (ParseException e) {                
            System.out.println(e.getMessage());
        }           
        Date d2=null;
        try {
            d2 = df.parse(d2String);
        } catch (ParseException e) {                
            System.out.println(e.getMessage());
        }
        System.out.println(d1);
        System.out.println(d2);
        System.out.println("done");
      }
    }

An April fools joke? It just seems very contrived that the dates BOTH correspond to April 1. + 1 year, -12 months == same date. If your dateformat object is strict (df.setLenient(false)) then it would raise the error for you. — evnafets
– evnafets, Commented Apr 14, 2009 at 4:31

Peter · Accepted Answer · 2009-04-14 03:48:02Z

6

"dd/MM/yyyy"

should read:

"MM/dd/yyyy"

answered Apr 14, 2009 at 3:48

Peter

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Comments

fospathi · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-06 07:07:22Z

2

As Peter mentioned, the meaning of the letters can be found in the documentation here: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/1.5.0/docs/api/java/text/SimpleDateFormat.html.

edited Jun 6, 2020 at 7:07

fospathi

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answered Apr 14, 2009 at 12:41

Nico Heid

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Comments

Jeremy Cron · Accepted Answer · 2009-04-14 13:24:57Z

1

The reason that it wasn't giving you what you expected is like Peter said the SimpleDateFormat should read "MM/dd/yyyy"

The reason that the result is saying that they appear to be equal is because with the format that you've given it "dd/MM/yyyy", d1String's Month is 28. It is taking 28 - 12, adding a year, 16 - 12, adding another year, and the result is 4 (April) and the year is now 2008. Same thing for d2String.

answered Apr 14, 2009 at 13:24

Jeremy Cron

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aintnoprophet · Accepted Answer · 2009-04-14 13:13:45Z

0

You could try declaring your dates as Date objects.

answered Apr 14, 2009 at 13:13

aintnoprophet

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1 Comment

Ian McLaird Over a year ago

He did. The constructor Date(String) is deprecated. He's using the correct way to convert a String into a Date.

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