SimpleDateFormat.parse() causes Unparsable date exception

Question

I am using SimpleDateFormat to both format and parse date strings. The format is working properly, but parse results in the following exception:
java.text.ParseException: Unparseable date: "2007-08-31T12:05:05.651-0700"
at java.text.DateFormat.parse(Unknown Source)
Here is my code:
SimpleDateFormat dateFormatter = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'kk:mm:ss.SZ");
String dateTime = dateFormatter.format(new Date());
Date test = dateFormatter.parse(dateTime);
For testing purposes, I am formatting a date string, and then passing it right back into parse() and I get the exception.
I am using jre1.5.0_10.
Thank you for your help.
-Karen

Answer 1

You have specified the milliseconds (S) to have a minimum of 1 letter.
From the API:
Number: For formatting, the number of pattern letters is the minimum number of digits, and shorter numbers are zero-padded to this amount. For parsing, the number of pattern letters is ignored unless it's needed to separate two adjacent fields.
If you specify it like this:SimpleDateFormat dateFormatter = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'kk:mm:ss.SSSZ");
// or like this
SimpleDateFormat dateFormatter = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'kk:mm:ss.S Z");it will work.
Message was edited by:
dwg