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Illegal pattern character 'Y' on Ubuntu
2 answers
I am trying to format text into a date. Here is what I have:
String pattern = "yyyy.MM.dd";
SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat(pattern);
Date d=sdf.parse("12.1.5");
I get:
java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Illegal pattern character 'Y'
at this point.
I have also tried using a ParsePosition as well as "2012.01.05". Same error.
How can I parse this string into a date? Any optional ways? What am I missing?
Thanks,
The code you've given works fine - although the fact that you're claiming you'll have a 4 digit year, 2 digit month and then 2 digit day, and then providing 2-1-1 is pretty ropy.
Given the exception you're getting, I suspect that your pattern is actually "YYYY.MM.dd" instead. That's valid in Java 7 where Y means "week year" but it's not valid in Java 6 which doesn't support Y as a format specifier - only y.
Even when it's valid, you really don't want Y here - you would only specify week years when you're also specifying the week-of-week-year and day-of-week, which you're not doing here.
Stick to the pattern you've actually got in the code you posted - but make sure your data actually matches it...
