SimpleDateFormat parsing difficulty

Question

Hello all,
Recently, I had to parse Strings into Dates using SimpleDateFormat. The difficulty I had was because the Strings had timezone offsets. The code below shows the 3 tests it took to create a Date object of specified TimeZone.
Test 1
Fails because I don't set the TimeZone for SimpleDateFormat.
Test 2
Works for the first String because the TimeZone matches the timezone in the String.
Test 3
Works for all Strings, but is cumbersome because I have to parse the end of the String myself.
My question is this: Shouldn't SimpleDateFormat parse a String directly into a Date without having you to specify the TimeZone of that Date? This problem was very annoying to solve and goes against logic (at least mine!).
I'm interested in any thoughts on this matter. Am I being unreasonable, or is this poorly explained in the API?
import java.text.DateFormat;
import java.text.ParseException;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.Date;
import java.util.SimpleTimeZone;
public class DateTests {
     private static String DATE_FORMAT = "yyyyMMddHHmmss.SSSZ";
     private static String[] TEST_DATA = {
          "20020125120434.175+0800",
          "20031101195801.942+0000",
          "20041231000159.999-0536",
          "20050220165427.531-1100"
     private static int MINUTE = 60 * 1000; //in milliseconds
     private static int HOUR = 60 * MINUTE;
     public static void main(String[] args) {
          test1();
          test2();
          test3();
     private static void test1() {
          System.out.println("**** TEST 1 ****\n");
          DateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat(DATE_FORMAT);
          formatter.setLenient(false); //want to check that dates are valid
          for (String dateString : TEST_DATA) {
               try {
                    Date date = formatter.parse(dateString);
                    System.out.println("Success! The date is: "+date.toString());
               } catch (ParseException e) {
                    System.out.println(dateString + " has error index of: " + e.getErrorOffset());
          //out of curiousity, lets see the String representation of the current date & time
          Date now = new Date();
          String currentDate = formatter.format(now);
          System.out.println("\nThe current date as a String: "+currentDate);
          System.out.println("\n");
     private static void test2() {
          System.out.println("**** TEST 2 ****\n");
          DateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat(DATE_FORMAT);
          formatter.setLenient(false); //want to check that dates are valid
          //lets make the timezone +0800
          formatter.setTimeZone(new SimpleTimeZone(8 * HOUR, "GMT")); //8 hour offset
          for (String dateString : TEST_DATA) {
               try {
                    Date date = formatter.parse(dateString);
                    System.out.println("Success! The date is: "+date.toString());
               } catch (ParseException e) {
                    System.out.println(dateString + " has error index of: " + e.getErrorOffset());
          System.out.println("\nSuccess for the first date. Why? The timezone of the formatter matches the date.");
          System.out.println("\n");
     private static void test3() {
          System.out.println("**** TEST 3 ****\n");
          DateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat(DATE_FORMAT);
          formatter.setLenient(false); //want to check that dates are valid
          for (String dateString : TEST_DATA) {
               try {
                    //lets set a timezone for each individual date
                    int length = dateString.length();
                    int gmtMinutes = Integer.parseInt(dateString.substring(length-2, length));
                    int gmtHours = Integer.parseInt(dateString.substring(length-4, length-2));
                    int timeZone = gmtMinutes * MINUTE + gmtHours * HOUR;
                    timeZone = dateString.charAt(length-5) == '+' ? timeZone : -timeZone;
                    formatter.setTimeZone(new SimpleTimeZone(timeZone, "GMT"));
                    Date date = formatter.parse(dateString);
                    System.out.println("Success! The date is: "+date.toString());
               } catch (ParseException e) {
                    System.out.println(dateString + " has error index of: " + e.getErrorOffset());
}-Muel

Answer 1

Date objects don't have time zones.
This is true, my problem was that I needed to parse both the Date and the TimeZone from a String. I got misled by the SimpleDateFormat documentation (the symbol Z), and somehow got the impression that a Date should have an associated TimeZone!
In hindsight, it is clear that Z should be used for Date strings containing a timezone and that SimpleDateFormat uses the timezone to modify the Date so that it's correct for the timezone of the current machine. If that makes sense!
-Muel