parsing dates with variable spaces

Question

I am using Joda to parse dates and have a format where leading zeros are not used, e.g.:

 Mon Nov 20 14:40:36 2006
 Mon Nov  6 14:40:36 2006

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Answer 1

I have just created a quick program to check this -

SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("EEE MMM d HH:mm:ss yyyy");

try {
    String source1 = "Mon Nov 20 14:40:36 2006";
    Date d1 = sdf.parse(source1);
    String source2 = "Mon Nov  6 14:40:36 2006";
    Date d2 = sdf.parse(source2);

    String res1 = sdf.format(d1);
    String res2 = sdf.format(d2);

    System.out.println(source1 +"="+ res1);
    System.out.println(source2 +"="+ res2);
} catch (ParseException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}

The output from this is -

Mon Nov 20 14:40:36 2006=Mon Nov 20 14:40:36 2006
Mon Nov  6 14:40:36 2006=Mon Nov 6 14:40:36 2006

So, even though source2 has the extra space, it is still parsed by

EEE MMM d HH:mm:ss yyyy

Hope that helps