Subtracting from java.util.Date

[Gayatri Ganesh]

Hi,

I am looking for date functions which will allow me to subract 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 3 mths, 1 year.

Date now = new Date();
From now, I want to subtract 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 3 mths, 1 year.


I searched the the java.util classes.
java.uil.Calendar has a add() method but it doesn't return a java.util.Date object.

Can anyone tell me how i could do this subtraction and the return value is a java.util.Date object.

Thanks,
Gayatri

[Dave Wingate]

It's been a while ... but I think you want something along the lines of:

Date startingDate;
GregorianCalendar gc = new GregorianCalendar();
gc.setTime(startingDate);
gc.add(Calendar.DAY_OF_YEAR, -1);
Date result = gc.getTime();

[Gayatri Ganesh]

Thanks Dave.
It works...

[Bhaskar boddupalli]

yes...

[Tony Docherty]

if i want to subtract 21years ..

please don't say gc.add(Calendar.DAY_OF_YEAR, -21); which is not working :P

Well it wouldn't work, that is subtracting 21 days and not 21 years. If you want to subtract years you need to use:

 gc.add(Calendar.YEAR, -21);

[Bhaskar boddupalli]

Thanks.. i had found my mistake

[Rob Spoor]

Please don't edit your posts after they have been replied to. It makes the replies look odd. If Tony hadn't quoted your post I wouldn't have understood what he was going on about.