Coverting Date.toString() back to a new Date object

Question

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/util/Date.html#toString()
After reading this, I am able to see the output format:
dow mon dd hh:mm:ss zzz yyyy
However, my questions is, what if you want to convert this String back into a new Date object later? After reviewing SimpleDateFormatter and other related classes, I find nowhere there is a linked parsing that allows this to be easily coverted back into a new Date object at runtime.
Am I wrong?
Thanks.

Answer 1

Yup, the problem is that I do not have a reference to
the original string. Is there a simple direct way to
do this?Wait, I misread this. The original string?
If you have a Date and get a String out of it, and you later want the original Date, then it's generally better to restructure your app to preserve the original Date. If for some reason that isn't an option (although often things are options when you don't think they are), then you can use SimpleDateFormat to produce a new Date object who value matches the date that the String represents.