FAQ - Everything you ever wanted to know about dates

[Dirk Schreckmann]

I think it'd be nice to have a few pages on working with dates in Java in our wiki. So, I'm bringing attention to the topic with this post.
What I'd like to do here is gather ideas for what issues frequently arise when working with dates - things like parsing dates, formatting dates, comparing dates, and manipulating dates. After we've accumulated some ideas and links to questions and/or answers, if someone doesn't beat me to the punch, I'll start putting together the wiki pages.
(I think JDBC date issues would fit better in the JDBC FAQ section than here.)
Update: The topics so far

parsing a string to a date

formatting a date for display

comparing dates

date arithmetic

determining holidays (perhaps weekend days, day of week)

working with fields of Date/Calendar classes - especially that the first month is numbered 0

timezones

daylight savings time

(Again, I'd prefer to discuss JDBC/database issues with dates elsewhere.)
Now, let's begin work on these at http://faq.javaranch.com/view?JavaDatesFaq
[ April 30, 2004: Message edited by: Dirk Schreckmann ]

[Stan James]

Cool idea. Dates are a mess in Java, so any help would be appreciated.
Some requirements I've had to meet in the past:
* Convert from string to date & back. Eg write 12/31/1999 to plain text file, read it back into a date.
* Compare the time portions of two dates ignoring the date portion. Ok, that's a bit too bizzare.
* Add or subtract n days, months, hours, etc.
* I have a current requirement to add n non-holiday business days. Do you know an existing class that works with a holiday schedule and skips weekends?

[Stefan Wagner]

Difference between and pitfall: sql.Date and util.Date.
Why is my month 0? (or 1 less than expected).
What's the first day of week?
There was a longer calculate-easter thread - in "Programming Diversions"?

[Chengwei Lee]

How about including java.sql.Timestamp as well?
Comparison of Timestamp is upto the time component & it takes a while to debug why the comparison between 2 Timestamp failed when their date component is entirely identical, only to realise that their time component is different.

[Corey McGlone]

One place I always get hung up with regards to Dates are timezones. Quite often, I have dates coming from multiple timezones and I need to convert times from one timezone to another. Not only is that task difficult, but some places observe daylight savings time while others don't.
I've found little in Java that confuses me as much as Dates do.

[Nick George]

How to get one.
[ April 30, 2004: Message edited by: Joseph George ]

[Dirk Schreckmann]

How to get one.
A good place to start might be Solveig's Dating Design Patterns site.
[ April 30, 2004: Message edited by: Dirk Schreckmann ]

[Dirk Schreckmann]

I think we've put together a nice challenging list (which I distilled in the first post), so far.
Let's start hacking away at creating some of the best explanations we can put together at http://faq.javaranch.com/view?JavaDatesFaq