Java: Difference between two dates spanning over months

Question

I have the following code that successfully gets me the difference between two days (in days, hours, minutes, seconds):

SimpleDateFormat format = new SimpleD         


        

Answer 1

You are using

SimpleDateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-DD HH:mm:ss");

Should be

SimpleDateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss");

You'll get the correct result of

Start: 2013-05-31 10:15:01
End: 2013-08-01 11:22:33
62 days, 1 hours, 7 minutes, 32 seconds

Here's the javadoc for the date patterns. dd is day in month. DD is day in year. Your Date objects just weren't parsed the way you expected. Basically the day in year value of 31 was overwriting the month value.

Debuggers are your friend.