Working with Date and Time

[Help Me]

Hi,

I've written the following code to calculate the elapsed time since birth. But on running it, the month and year are not getting displayed correctly. I'm getting a negative value for the month and also the elapsed year is wrong. Please help me...

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.GregorianCalendar;
import java.util.Date;
 
public class ElapsedTime
{
public static void main(String args[])
{
try
{
System.out.print("Enter your date of birth: dd-mm-yyyy\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b");
BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in));
String dob = br.readLine();
String temp[] = dob.split("-");
int dd = Integer.parseInt(temp[0]);
int mm = Integer.parseInt(temp[1]) - 1;
int yy = Integer.parseInt(temp[2]);
GregorianCalendar bday = new GregorianCalendar(yy,mm,dd);
Date bdate = bday.getTime();
Date today = new Date();
long bdateMS = bdate.getTime();
long todayMS = today.getTime();
long elapsedMS = todayMS - bdateMS;
System.out.println("You have been living for:");
System.out.println("\t" + elapsedMS / (12 * 30 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000) + " years");
System.out.println("\t" + elapsedMS / (30 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000) + " months");
System.out.println("\t" + elapsedMS / (7 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000) + " weeks");
System.out.println("\t" + elapsedMS / (24 * 60 * 60 * 1000) + " days");
System.out.println("\t" + elapsedMS / (60 * 60 * 1000) + " hours");
System.out.println("\t" + elapsedMS / (60 * 1000) + " minutes");
System.out.println("\t" + elapsedMS / 1000 + " seconds");
System.out.println("\t" + elapsedMS + " milliseconds");
}
catch(IOException ioe)
{
ioe.printStackTrace();
}
catch(Exception e)
{
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}

Thanks,
Babu Rajendran

[Paul Sturrock]

Can you explain what this calculation does? :

System.out.println("\t" + elapsedMS / (12 * 30 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000) + " years");

Specifically, what are you trying to achieve with the 30?

Also, remember that any literal integers in your program will be treated as int values, and that ints have a maximum size. Try these two lines to watch what happens when you exceed this maximum:

 System.out.println(30 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000);
 System.out.println(30l * 24l * 60l * 60l * 1000l);
 

(the l in the above is a lowecase letter 'L')
[ April 23, 2007: Message edited by: Paul Sturrock ]

[Help Me]

I'm just converting from milliseconds to years. Well..I got the point now. Thanks a lot!

Regards,
Babu Rajendran

[Paul Sturrock]

Originally posted by Babu Rajendran:
I'm just converting from milliseconds to years. Well..I got the point now. Thanks a lot!

Regards,
Babu Rajendran

Are you sure your logic is correct?

[Jesper de Jong]

Originally posted by Babu Rajendran:
I'm just converting from milliseconds to years.

A year is not 12 * 30 = 360 days.

[Stan James]

Computing duration with months in it from milliseconds is suspect, I think. Start from January 31 of any year, what answers would you want from each of the following?

jan31 + oneMonth = ??
jan31 + oneMonth + oneMonth = ??
jan31 + twoMonths = ??
jan31 + oneMonth - oneMonth = ??

Years might bother some folks, too. What's

feb29 + oneYear?
feb29 + oneYear - oneYear?

I think you can get the answers humans expect for the difference between dates by breaking up the year, month, day parts of the date and working from there. What do you think?