SimpleDateFormat.parse() ignores the number of characters in pattern

Question

I\'m trying to parse a date String which can have tree different formats. Even though the String should not match the second pattern it somehow does and therefore returns a

Answer 1

It is documented in the SimpleDateFormat javadoc:

For formatting, the number of pattern letters is the minimum number of digits, and shorter numbers are zero-padded to this amount. For parsing, the number of pattern letters is ignored unless it's needed to separate two adjacent fields.