How to parse "Wed Jan 08 22:16:55 GMT 2003" to 08-Jan-2003 ?

Question

Hi
My program reads a date as a String from a file, so I have
String readMyDate = "Wed Jan 08 22:16:55 GMT 2003"
I try to parse this to a Date with:
DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MMM-yyyy"); // eg 25-Dec-2002
try {
java.util.Date when = df.parse(readMyDate);
catch (ParseException e2)
System.out.println("parse error " + e2);
but when I run this I get an error:
parse error java.text.ParseException: Unparseable date: "Wed Jan 08 22:16:55 GMT 2003"
So how do i get from
"Wed Jan 08 22:16:55 GMT 2003"
to
08-Jan-2003
(Incidentally the dd-MMM-yyyy style Date will then be used to update a SQL database)
I didn't find an example on searching to quite cover this
Thanks in advance
Mike2z
[JDK is 1.3.1]

Answer 1

What really annoys me is that there doesn't seem to be a way to easily reverse that either, and it's probably because that readMyDate string contains extra information the Date() and Calendar() objects don't need.
In any case, you had the right idea...
DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat( FULL );
java.util.Date when = df.parse( readMyDate );
DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat( "dd-MMM-yyyy" );
System.out.println( when );
I don't think you need to specify a date format in order to create a new Date object with your sample string (as it's fairly universal). My tests say Date() will parse that, but the documentation is really bad in this regard. I don't see how to phrase a "Jan 08 2003 Wed 22:16:55" string for example.
But in a nutshell, DateFormat is useful for setting what the output should be. Try:
java.util.Date when = new java.util.Date( readMyDate );
first.