Why I can't parse a SimpleDateFormat with pattern "MMMMM dd" in Java?

Question

I need to parse a string like "February 12, 1981" as a Date. I use SimpleDateFormat. But if I do:

new SimpleDateFormat("MMMMM dd, yyyy").parse("February 12, 1981")

I get java.text.ParseException.

I tried to reduce it to see where the problem is. First:

new SimpleDateFormat("MMMMM").parse("February")

works. Then:

new SimpleDateFormat("MMMMM dd").parse("February 12")

doesn't work anymore. Anyone know why? I also tried new SimpleDateFormat("MMMMM' 'dd").

I'm using JRE 1.6.0_06.

Answer 1

What version of JDK/JRE are you using?

This works fine for me with 1.4.2_14, 1.5.0_16, and 1.6.0_07:

SimpleDateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("MMMMM dd, yyyy");
Date parsed = df.parse("February 12, 1981");
System.out.println(parsed);

output:

Thu Feb 12 00:00:00 EST 1981