Validating a date Please help

Question

I have a string
String a = "29/02/2001";
This is not a valid date. Is there any way to validte this kind of strings.
and if I give a string like
String a="20/02/2001";
this shoud be validated as a valid date
Thanks

Answer 1

thanks that really worked, but one more problem
Can i turn around the string like from 20-3-2001 to
2001-3-20
public DateValidation(String testStr)
     boolean error = false;
     DateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat( "dd-MM-yyyy" );
     formatter.setLenient(false);
     Date date = null;
     if (testStr.length() != 0)
          try
               date = formatter.parse(testStr);
               SimpleDateFormat formatter1= new SimpleDateFormat ("yyyy/mm/dd");
               formatter1.setLenient(false);
               datestring=formatter1.format(date);
          catch (ParseException ex)
               System.out.println("Error parsing date");
public String getDateString()
     return this.datestring;
this is the way i tried out
but when I gave
java DateValidation 30-09-2001
2001/00/30
this is what i got
java DateValidation 3-02-2001
2001/00/03
i keep getting zeros at the month position
Can you help
Thanks