SimpleDateFormat and locale

[Ronan Dowd]

Hi All,

I'm using java 1.5 SimpleDateFormat and was wondering if passing a Locale into the constructor
for SimpleDateFormat is needed at all, i.e. will it always bring in way you specify in the pattern ?, see below code:

String PATTERN = "dd/MM/yyyy HH:mm:ss";
Date now = new Date();

SimpleDateFormat sdf1 = new SimpleDateFormat(PATTERN);
System.out.println("Date (default locale) = [" + sdf1.format(now));

SimpleDateFormat sdf2 = new SimpleDateFormat(PATTERN, new Locale("en", "US"));
System.out.println("Date (US locale) = [" + sdf2.format(now));

both of the above give the same value of [15 Apr 2010 11:37:05]

[Amit Vinod Dali]

http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/i18n/format/dateFormatSymbols.html

[Jesper de Jong]

If you don't specify a locale, then it will use the default locale of your system. If that also happens to be US English (or some other language where the abbreviation for April is "Apr"), then ofcourse the results will be the same.