SimpleDateFormat Exception on setting lenient to false

Question

Why is this code throwing exception of unparseable date?

SimpleDateFormat f = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss'.000Z'");
f.setLenient(false);
String dateStr = "2012-03-11T02:46:01.000Z";
f.parse(dateStr);

It works fine when lenient is true. It strangely works for input date '2012-03-01T02:46:01.000Z' even with lenient as false. Default timezone being used : PST

Worked for using your code, got `Sun Mar 11 02:46:01 GMT 2012` back from the date, and it seems to work with other strings. — Tom, Jan 29 '13 at 01:32
It fails for me in the described way using both 1.6.0_37 and 1.7.0_04. — Ryan Stewart, Jan 29 '13 at 01:41
Now I know the problem, I added my default timezone in question for clarity. — RandomQuestion, Jan 29 '13 at 02:45

andrewdotn · Accepted Answer · 2013-01-29T01:53:33.873

10

Because that time does not exist in your default time zone—it was daylight savings time change day, and time jumped from 2:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m., so there was no 2:46 that morning. :P

Since you’re parsing UTC, set the SimpleDateFormat instance time zone to UTC like so:

f.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));

and your problem will go away.

edited Jan 29 '13 at 01:53

answered Jan 29 '13 at 01:38

andrewdotn

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SimpleDateFormat Exception on setting lenient to false

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