DateFormat.parse(String)

Question

can anybody tell me why I don't get a SHORT format:
import java.util.*;
import java.text.*;
public class MyDate{
   public static void main(String[] args){
      Date date = makeDate("04/22/2003");
      System.out.println(date); // what i get looks more like FULL
    public static Date makeDate(String dateString){
       Date date = null;
       try {
          DateFormat fmt = DateFormat.getDateInstance(DateFormat.SHORT);
          date = fmt.parse(dateString);
      catch(ParseException e) {}
      return date;
}Thank you.

Answer 1

what I think is tripping you up is that a java.util.Date is not a String. It looks like you're thinking that you can format a java.util.Date object and somehow it is "11/23/2004" (or whatever) - but it's not - it's just a number. So, you have this String that you want to convert to a java.util.Date (which you correctly did with the parse method of the DateFormat class) but then you turn around and want to convert that java.util.Date to a String so you can put it into a List, so why not just put the original String into your List? Is it because you want to change the format? Fair enough, then you can use two DateFormat implementations, one to parse the incoming String to a Date, then the other to format the Date to the format you want. Or is it so you can do the sort chronologically? If that's the case, then you can write up a Comparator to do that, or you can store Dates in your list, sort them, and when it comes time to display this thing (if you ever do that) use a DateFormat implementation to convert those to a formatted String.
Make sense?