SimpleDateFormat is not parsing the milliseconds correctly

Question

Background:

In my database table, I have two timestamps

timeStamp1 = 2011-08-23 14:57:26.662
timeStamp2 = 2011-08-23 14:57:26.9
         


        

Answer 1

I had the same problem with too accurate time from my logfiles with 6 digit milliseconds. Parsing Time gave up to 16 minutes difference! WTF?

16-JAN-12 04.00.00.999999 PM GMT --> 16 Jan 2012 04:16:39 GMT

Changing the number of digits reduced the erroneous difference and thanks to this thread I could identify the problem:

16-JAN-12 04.00.00.99999 PM GMT --> 16 Jan 2012 04:01:39 GMT
16-JAN-12 04.00.00.9999 PM GMT --> 16 Jan 2012 04:00:09 GMT
16-JAN-12 04.00.00.999 PM GMT --> 16 Jan 2012 04:00:00 GMT

As SimpleDateFormat internally handles only 3 digits I removed the unnecessary with a small regex (ignoring round-off errors, working for 1 up to n digits):

str = str.replaceAll("(\\.[0-9]{3})[0-9]*( [AP]M)", "$1$2");

Thanks to @Peter Lawrey for your answer, prevented me going insane :-)