Problem in SimpleDateFormat

[Saptarshi Chakraborty]

hi folks ,
I am having a problem in SimpleDateFormat class. I have a method like this

public static Date getDateToString(Date dt,String pattern){
		
		Date outputDate=null;
		try{
		SimpleDateFormat formatter=new SimpleDateFormat(pattern);
		outputDate=formatter.parse(dt.toString());
		}catch(Exception e){
			e.printStackTrace();
		}
		
		return outputDate;
	}

public static void main(String args[]){
	
System.out.print(" Date is ===    "+DateUtils.getDateToString((new Date()),"MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm") );
}

running the code throws an exception like


Unparseable date: "Tue May 05 13:38:42 IST 2009"
at java.text.DateFormat.parse(Unknown Source)


Can any one figure out what is the problem here in this code?
and how can I convert the date to my desired format.

[Campbell Ritchie]

What pattern are you using? Does the pattern match the input String?

[Rob Spoor]

Just what are you trying to do? Convert a Date into a Date? Why not just return the original Date object?

I think, given the method name, this is what you want:

public static String getDateToString(Date dt,String pattern) // return String, not Date
{
    SimpleDateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat(pattern);
    return formatter.format(dt);
}

[Saptarshi Chakraborty]

yes I want to convert a Date into a Date with a specific format.

[Saptarshi Chakraborty]

I was wrong in my approach.Date objects don't have a format.A date is the number of milliseconds since Jan 1st, 1970 UTC. It is a number. It has no format. SimpleDateFormat can parse it to a String with our desired format.

[Vt Guru]

Hi,
Refer this Example will help you