java string to datetime conversion issue

Answer 1

"dd/MM/yyyy"

should read:

"MM/dd/yyyy"

Answer 2

as Peter mentioned, the meaning of the letters can be found in the documentation here: http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/text/SimpleDateFormat.html

Answer 3

You could try declaring your dates as Date objects.

Answer 4

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.