Why Java SimpleDateFormat().parse() is printing weird formate?

Question

My input is String formated as the following:

3/4/2010 10:40:01 AM
3/4/2010 10:38:31 AM

My code is:

DateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("dd/mm/yyyy hh:mm:ss aa");
            try
            {
                Date today = dateFormat.parse(time);
                System.out.println("Date Time : " + today);

            }
            catch (ParseException e)
            {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }

the output is:

Sun Jan 03 10:38:31 AST 2010
Sun Jan 03 10:40:01 AST 2010

I'm not sure from where the day (Sun) came from? or (AST)? and why the date is wrong? I just wanted to keep the same format of the original String date and make it into a Date object.

I'm using Netbeans 6.8 Mac version.

Answer 1

Should be MM, not mm. The lowercase mm is for minutes, not months.

DateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yyyy hh:mm:ss aa");

Answer 2

Printing the Date out using System.out.println() results in the toString() method being called on the Date object.

The format string used in toString() is what is causing the Day of the week and the timezone to appear in the output.

This is apart from the parsing mistake pointed out by Duffy.

Answer 3

MM, not mm for months. You are using mm twice - and logically, it's the same things - minutes.

Answer 4

The answer is simple. You have displayed the Date.toString() value of today and not the intended dateFormat version. what you require is:

System.out.println("Date Time : " + dateFormat.format(today) );