Java – simpledateformat cannot handle 12 months correctly

I'm trying to parse the string "2 / 20 / 2012 12:00:00 am" using simpledateformat. It seems that it will come out at 12 p.m Replace

Date fromFmt = new SimpleDateFormat("MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm:ss aa")
                       .parse("2/20/2012 12:00:00 AM");

    // Calendar months are 0-indexed
    Date fromCal = new Date(new GregorianCalendar(2012,1,20,0)
                       .getTimeInMillis());

    System.out.println(fromFmt);
    System.out.println(fromCal);

Output:

Mon Feb 20 12:00:00 PST 2012
Mon Feb 20 00:00:00 PST 2012

I hope they both export the latter Is there a problem with my format string?

(and please don't say 'use jodatime'.)

Solution

Use instead:

new SimpleDateFormat("MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss aa")

Please note that I am using HH instead of HH The former does so:

HH do this:

You told simpledateformat that you would deliver within an hour in the range of 0-23, but you didn't actually do so That's why you have this problem