Is there a problem on the pattern of SimpleDateFormat to parse a String ?

Question

Hello,
I tried to parse a String to a Date using a SimpleDateFormat.
I must be able to have on the pattern something like : "yyyyMMdd_HH00".
To get a String from a Date with SimpleDateFormat.format(Date date) it works well, but when a try to parse a String into a Date with SimpleDateFormat.parse(String date) I get a : java.text.ParseException: Unparseable date.
I try it on a JVM 1.4 and 1.5 for the same result.
An exemple of code :
          String pattern = "yyyyMMdd_HH00";
          SimpleDateFormat currentFormat = new SimpleDateFormat(pattern);
          Date date = currentFormat.parse("20091223_1000");It seems that adding the '00' after 'HH' raise the exception...
Has the 'HH00' a particular meaning like on Oracle 'HH24' ?
Is there a way to add number after the 'HH' ?
Thanks
Edit :
Oh yeah, I forgot, I tryied to use the pattern "yyyyMMdd_HH'00'" using '' to escape the 00 without better result...
Edited by: Jeremy.Antonucci on 23 déc. 2009 15:25

Answer 1

The context of this pattern :
To get a file on a http server, I must build an Url String with a filename using the current date.
I want to be able to change easily the pattern on a file parameters.
The date must be ending with 00 for the minutes.
I may have use a pattern with 'HHmm' and suppress the minutes but if it is change on the futur the code will not work...
As I can't say if in the futur the url will change for the date pattern or not, I decide to use a pattern like "yyyyMMdd_HH00" that works fine for everything else than parsing a string.
I create a String date based on the current date on UTC using this pattern and keep it to use it to compose an Url String.
After I need to know how much time I must sleep before the next execution (on each Hour), so I use this date +1 hour to see if the currentDate during this calculation is higher than this date+1... (I'm surely not clear, but it is not the real problem just for curious ^^)
A dirty solution is to avoid this problem is to catch this case and do substitution on a temporary pattern of the 'HH00' with 'HHmm'. It's really dirty because nothing says that later a 'HH00' mean always 'HHmm' but I have nothing better...
          String pattern2 = pattern;
          if (pattern.matches(".*HH00$")) {
               pattern2=pattern.substring(0, (pattern.length()-2))+"mm";
          }Where can I do this bug report ?
Do you see a good solution ?