10000 milliseconds showing as 01:00:10.000 - why ?

Hi,
I have a problem with the following code... I take the time as "now", add 10 seconds and want to display the difference between the two.

I am expecting to see 00:00:10.000 but I get 01:00:10.000... why ?

import java.text.DateFormat;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.Calendar;
import java.util.Date;
import java.util.TimeZone;

public class StupidTest
{
 
  /**
   * @param args
   */
  public static void main( String[] args )
  {
    final SimpleDateFormat printFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("hh:mm:ss.SSS z");
    printFormat.setTimeZone( TimeZone.getTimeZone( ("Europe/London") ) );
    
    final Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance(TimeZone.getTimeZone( ("Europe/London") ));
    
    final Date firstDate = cal.getTime();
    System.out.println("1st Date: " + firstDate.getTime());
    System.out.println("1st Date: " + printFormat.format( firstDate ));
    System.out.println("1st Date: " + DateFormat.getTimeInstance().format(firstDate));
    
    //Date lastDate = new Date( 10123 );
    cal.add( Calendar.SECOND, 10 );
    final Date lastDate = cal.getTime();
    
    System.out.println(lastDate.toString());
    
    System.out.println();
 
    System.out.println("2nd Date: " + lastDate.getTime());
    System.out.println("2nd Date: " + printFormat.format( lastDate ));
    System.out.println("2nd Date: " + DateFormat.getTimeInstance().format(lastDate));
 
    System.out.println();
    final long diffInMilliSeconds = lastDate.getTime() - firstDate.getTime();
    final Date diffDate = new Date(diffInMilliSeconds);
    System.out.println(diffDate.toString());
 
    System.out.println("diff: " + (diffInMilliSeconds));
    System.out.println("diff: " + printFormat.format( diffDate ));
    System.out.println("diff: " + DateFormat.getTimeInstance().format(diffDate));
 
  }
 
}

The output is :

10000 milliseconds is 10 seconds right ?
so should be January 1st 1970 00:00:10.000 right ?
but it's formatted as 01:00:10.000

All i want is display the difference between 2 dates ... any other way ?
Why ? oh why ?

Thanks

Pascal

Here's a hint: when I replaced "Europe/London" by "America/Vancouver" the output was this:

Wed Dec 31 16:00:10 PST 1969
diff: 10000
diff: 04:00:10.000 PST
diff: 4:00:10 PM

Any other way to display the difference between two dates? Well, yes, any other way would be preferable. You already have 10,000 milliseconds. Just use ordinary arithmetic to get the number of seconds.

Contrary to what you might think, Europe/London doesn't actually use Greenwich Mean Time. Not during this part of the year, anyway. If you want GMT, ask for TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT") instead.

See here for a similar discussion, and a solution that avoids using Date and DateFormat entirely, instead using simple math as Paul suggests.
[ October 02, 2007: Message edited by: Jim Yingst ]

Originally posted by Jim Yingst:
Contrary to what you might think, Europe/London doesn't actually use Greenwich Mean Time. Not during this part of the year, anyway. If you want GMT, ask for TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT") instead.

The actual difference is that Britain was using daylight saving time on January 1, 1970!

Good point. Were they calling it British Summer Time back then? The mind boggles.

Yes, they were.