SimpleDateFormat: unparseable date exception

Question

After looking after several existing posts, I am still not able to get my SimpleDateFormat parser working. Here is the code:

SimpleDateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat(
    "EEE, dd MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss Z", Locale.US);
try {
    volcanoListDate = df.parse(currentValue);
} catch (ParseException e) {
    Log.d("DEBUG", e.toString());
    Log.d("DEBUG", currentValue);
}

I always end up with a ParseException. Here is the output of the debug messages:

06-09 23:52:17.478: DEBUG/DEBUG(2436): java.text.ParseException: Unparseable date:
06-09 23:52:17.478: DEBUG/DEBUG(2436): Wed, 08 Jun 2011 03:23:55 -0500

Locale ist set and the pattern looks okay. Where am I wrong?

Try `Locale.ENGLISH`. Perhaps Android doesn't support country specific locales. — BalusC, Jun 09 '11 at 22:24
Already tried this. It does not work with Locale.English, UK or without a Locale. — Nils Blum-Oeste, Jun 09 '11 at 22:51
@BalusC thanks for that fix; I had no second parameter at all, and some devices were failing, but others not. I assume it had to do with which version of Android they're running... — Thunder Rabbit, Sep 29 '11 at 05:09

Nils Blum-Oeste · Accepted Answer · 2011-06-13T07:51:14.340

Here is the solution:

            SimpleDateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("EEE, dd MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss Z", Locale.US);
        try {
            volcanoListDate = df.parse(currentValue.replaceAll("\\p{Cntrl}", ""));
        } catch (ParseException e) {
            Log.d("VOLCANO_DEBUG", e.toString());
            Log.d("VOLCANO_DEBUG", currentValue);
        }

The important change is .replaceAll("\\p{Cntrl}", "") which removes control characters from the parsed string. The strange thing is, that I do not see any of those characters with Notepad++ in the xml where the string is from. However, obviously there is something and it is working now.

Thanks for all the help!

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 09 '11 at 22:09

3

Check your input for non-printing characters, like tab (instead of space), etc. Sometimes the reason it can't parse has little to do with the formatting of the numbers and a lot to do with unexpected characters (that you can't always see).

Considering some people have already reported "works for me" (@Thanks Bozho!) I would strongly suspect unprintable characters in your input string. Who knows, you might have a vertical tab embedded in there somewhere!

answered Jun 09 '11 at 22:09

Edwin Buck

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Thanks, works for me! The solution using `.replaceAll("\\p{Cntrl}", "")` is posted below. Previously I alreadey tried removing all whitespaces which did not help. – Nils Blum-Oeste Jun 10 '11 at 05:39

SimpleDateFormat: unparseable date exception

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