SimpleDateFormat - Unparsable Date exception with IST timezone. What's wrong?

Question

I have string with date in that format:

Oct 28, 2015, 05.15PM IST

So I want to parse it to Date object using SimpleDateFormat:

String date = "Oct 28, 2015, 05.15PM IST";
SimpleDateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat("MMM dd, yyyy, hh.mmaa zzz", Locale.US);
Date myDate = format.parse(date);

But I get exception:

java.text.ParseException: Unparseable date: "Oct 28, 2015, 05.15PM IST" (at offset 22)

What am I doing wrong?

From the given code, It works [here](http://ideone.com/m9A6LL) — sam, Oct 28 '15 at 12:05
Check [Java: unparseable date exception](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2009207/java-unparseable-date-exception). It is a similar question — sam, Oct 28 '15 at 12:09
@sam Okay, seems like I don't have "IST" id. But how can I deal with it so? — udenfox, Oct 28 '15 at 12:19
This is caused by ambiguity in the timezone 'IST'. See [this question](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11264697/java-timezone-strange-behavior-with-ist). — Adriaan Koster, Oct 28 '15 at 12:19

MrPublic · Answer 1 · 2015-10-28T12:14:45.357

0

From my understanding of the SimpleDateFormatwhen specifying the AM/PM component, you need not use two a's nor three z's. You are trying to parse "Oct 28, 2015, 05.15PM IST" with more than one AM/PM specifier, as well as more than one timezone specifier. Change your format Object to SimpleDateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat("MMM dd, yyyy, hh.mma z", Locale.US);

edited Oct 28 '15 at 12:14

answered Oct 28 '15 at 12:12

MrPublic

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score 0 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:58

The problem is that SimpleDateFormat can't parse "IST" as timezone because it ambiguous.

I solved that problem according to Adriaan Koster's answer. But actually it worked for me only after I cutted " IST" from my date string. So complete solution for the problem looks like that:

String date = "Oct 28, 2015, 05.15PM IST";
date = date.substring(0, date.length()-4);

SimpleDateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat("MMM dd, yyyy, hh.mma", Locale.US);
format.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("Asia/Calcutta"));
Date myDate = format.parse(date);

SimpleDateFormat - Unparsable Date exception with IST timezone. What's wrong?

2 Answers2