sort array list of special strings, by date

Question

I have an arrayList.

This is an arrayList of strings. The string contains a \"Date.toString\" in format of \"January 1, 1970, 00:00:00 GMT\" +

Answer 1

Convert the array into a list of dates and then sort them:

List dates = new ArrayList();
for(String s : dateStringArray){
  // split the date and task name
  Pattern p = Pattern.compile("(\\w+ \\d{1,2}, \\d{4}, \\d{2}:\\d{2}:\\d{2} \\w{3})(.*)");
  Matcher matcher = p.matcher(s);
  String taskname = "";
  String datestring = "";
  if (matcher.find()) {
    datestring = matcher.group(1);
    taskname = matcher.group(2);
  }
  // parse the date
  Date d = new SimpleDateFormat("MMMM dd, yyyy, HH:mm:ss z", 
               Locale.ENGLISH).parse(datestring);
  dates.add(d);
}
// sort the dates
Collections.sort(dates);

If you want to keep the task names, you will have to make own objects that have the date and the task as fields and are comparable by the dates.