Recognise an arbitrary date string

Question

I need to be able to recognise date strings. It doesn\'t matter if I can not distinguish between month and date (e.g. 12/12/10), I just need to classify the string as being

Answer 1

You can loop all available date formats in Java:

for (Locale locale : DateFormat.getAvailableLocales()) {
    for (int style =  DateFormat.FULL; style <= DateFormat.SHORT; style ++) {
        DateFormat df = DateFormat.getDateInstance(style, locale);
        try {
                df.parse(dateString);
                // either return "true", or return the Date obtained Date object
        } catch (ParseException ex) {
            continue; // unperasable, try the next one
        }
    }
}

This however won't account for any custom date formats.