what's wrong with this,.. Date, Calendar Stuff.. ????

[Antonio Giovanni]

Hi all,..

I am damn confused by the result of my code..

 Date date1=new Date();
Date date2=new Date();

Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
Date date3=cal.getTime();
   
System.out.println(date1);System.out.println(date2);System.out.println(date3);
   
if(date1.before(date2))
 System.out.println("Will not be printed");   
   
if(date1.before(date3))
 System.out.println("Will not be printed"); 

The values of all 3 Dates happens to be the same.

BUT the boolean results of both the IF conditions is Different. why??

I thought both the IF condition results should be the same..

Please let me know what is going wrong??
Appreciate your help..

DAMN !!.. this is really crazy..

[Antonio Giovanni]

Result:

 Fri Aug 19 17:23:29 CDT 2005
Fri Aug 19 17:23:29 CDT 2005
Fri Aug 19 17:23:29 CDT 2005
Will not be printed
 

[Antonio Giovanni]

ohhh yeah,..

the constructor

Date
public Date()Allocates a Date object and initializes it so that it represents the [B]time at which it was allocated[/B], measured to the nearest millisecond.
  

So using the before, after, compareTo, you cannot compare just the Dates..

Maybe i will format the Date instance to String object using SimpleDateFormat and then compare for dates..

your opinions ???

[Stuart Gray]

I'm sure the key to this lies in the 'millisecond precision'. Your Date objects are created in sequence and most likely differ only by a millisecond or two - if that. So when you print them out showing only hours, minutes, and seconds as you have, they appear to have the same value. But because the compare method works at a millisecond level, they are correctly determined to be different in the if statements.