Problems with DateFormat

Question

All,
I am using a DateFormat to format TimeStamps to useful strings. I am getting some rather unexpected results in the form of extra leading zeros.
For example,
1) 03/07/2002 14:0043:51PM
2) 03/07/2002 0014:43:51PM
3) 0003/07/2002 14:0043:51PM
4) 03/0007/2002 14:43:51PM
Any ideas?
-jonathan

Answer 1

I have seen reports about the DateFormat class giving erroneous results when it's used to create TimeStamps for log files, this could be a bug -- you might want to check the bug database to see if it's been fixed and at what revision number when it was fixed. In the meantime, you might want to format the date yourself with something like this (it might even be faster)
import java.util.*;
class DateFormat {
   static Calendar c=Calendar.getInstance(TimeZone.getDefault(),Locale.getDefault());
   public static String Now () {
      c.setTime(new Date(System.currentTimeMillis()));
      int hour=c.get(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY);
      String AMPM=" AM";
      if (hour>11) AMPM=" PM";
      return i2s(c.get(Calendar.MONTH),2) + "/"+
             i2s(c.get(Calendar.DATE),2) + "/"+
             i2s(c.get(Calendar.YEAR),4) + " "+
             i2s(hour,2) + ":"+
             i2s(c.get(Calendar.MINUTE),2) + ":"+
             i2s(c.get(Calendar.SECOND),2)+AMPM;
   private static String i2s(int in, int len) {
      String tmp=""+in;
      if (tmp.length()>len) return tmp.substring(tmp.length()-len);
      while (tmp.length()<len) tmp="0"+tmp;
      return tmp;
   public static void main(String[] args) {
      System.out.println(Now());
}V.V.