dates

[David Jon]

hi,
if i have 2 dates stored in Strings in the form d/mm/yyyy does anyone know of a neat way I can compare them to see if the first one is before the second one.
Cheers,
Jon.

[Art Metzer]

Hi, David.
The trick lies in the use of the java.text.SimpleDateFormat class:

import java.text.*;
import java.util.*;
 
public class WhichDateBefore {
 
    public static void main( String[] args ) {
 
        Date start = null;     // these Dates will be populated
        Date end = null;       // with values from the strings
 
        SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat( "d/MM/yyyy" );
        String now = "27/04/2001";
        String then = "31/12/1999";
 
        try {
            start = sdf.parse( then );
            end = sdf.parse( now );
        }
        catch ( ParseException pe ) {
            System.out.println( pe.toString() );
        }
 
        System.out.println( start + " before " + end + "? " + start.before( end ) );
    }
}

This code returns

Fri Dec 31 00:00:00 CST 1999 before Fri Apr 27 00:00:00 CDT 2001? true

Good luck,
Art