Sorry Chris...had not read your post correctly. Yes, that should work. if i specify a unique value for MM/dd/yy, like 04/28/05 for 28th April 2005, i should be able to break it up and get the components.
Here is one more way with one more issue:
the output is :
4/29/05
M/d/yy
which is exactly what i want. which mean the DateFormat.getLocalizedPattern() depends on what kind of DateFormat(SHORT, MEDIUM etc) you specify.
But the issue with that is: suppose i change the locale to 'France'. In that case the language also changes to french and then instead of M/d/yy, i see the equivalent in French jj/nn/aa which means i cant search for 'M' or 'd' or 'y' in the
String returned by DateFormat.getLocalizedPattern()
Which means that Chris' way of doing it is still the best way out