| Attempts to interpret the string s as a representation
of a date and time. If the attempt is successful, the time
indicated is returned represented as teh distance, measured in
milliseconds, of that time from the epoch (00:00:00 GMT on
January 1, 1970). If the attempt fails, an
IllegalArgumentException is thrown.
It accepts many syntaxes; in particular, it recognizes the IETF
standard date syntax: "Sat, 12 Aug 1995 13:30:00 GMT". It also
understands the continental U.S. time-zone abbreviations, but for
general use, a time-zone offset should be used: "Sat, 12 Aug 1995
13:30:00 GMT+0430" (4 hours, 30 minutes west of the Greenwich
meridian). If no time zone is specified, the local time zone is
assumed. GMT and UTC are considered equivalent.
The string s is processed from left to right, looking for
data of interest. Any material in s that is within the
ASCII parenthesis characters ( and ) is ignored.
Parentheses may be nested. Otherwise, the only characters permitted
within s are these ASCII characters:
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
0123456789,+-:/
and whitespace characters.
A consecutive sequence of decimal digits is treated as a decimal
number:
- If a number is preceded by + or - and a year
has already been recognized, then the number is a time-zone
offset. If the number is less than 24, it is an offset measured
in hours. Otherwise, it is regarded as an offset in minutes,
expressed in 24-hour time format without punctuation. A
preceding - means a westward offset. Time zone offsets
are always relative to UTC (Greenwich). Thus, for example,
-5 occurring in the string would mean "five hours west
of Greenwich" and +0430 would mean "four hours and
thirty minutes east of Greenwich." It is permitted for the
string to specify GMT, UT, or UTC
redundantly-for example, GMT-5 or utc+0430.
- If a number is greater than 70, it is regarded as a year number.
It must be followed by a space, comma, slash, or end of string.
- If the number is followed by a colon, it is regarded as an hour,
unless an hour has already been recognized, in which case it is
regarded as a minute.
- If the number is followed by a slash, it is regarded as a month
(it is decreased by 1 to produce a number in the range 0
to 11), unless a month has already been recognized, in
which case it is regarded as a day of the month.
- If the number is followed by whitespace, a comma, a hyphen, or
end of string, then if an hour has been recognized but not a
minute, it is regarded as a minute; otherwise, if a minute has
been recognized but not a second, it is regarded as a second;
otherwise, it is regarded as a day of the month.
A consecutive sequence of letters is regarded as a word and treated
as follows:
- A word that matches AM, ignoring case, is ignored (but
the parse fails if an hour has not been recognized or is less
than 1 or greater than 12).
- A word that matches PM, ignoring case, adds 12
to the hour (but the parse fails if an hour has not been
recognized or is less than 1 or greater than 12).
- Any word that matches any prefix of SUNDAY, MONDAY, TUESDAY,
WEDNESDAY, THURSDAY, FRIDAY, or SATURDAY, ignoring
case, is ignored. For example, sat, Friday, TUE, and
Thurs are ignored.
- Otherwise, any word that matches any prefix of JANUARY,
FEBRUARY, MARCH, APRIL, MAY, JUNE, JULY, AUGUST, SEPTEMBER,
OCTOBER, NOVEMBER, or DECEMBER, ignoring case, and
considering them in the order given here, is recognized as
specifying a month and is converted to a number (0 to
11). For example, aug, Sept, april, and
NOV are recognized as months. So is Ma, which
is recognized as MARCH, not MAY.
- Any word that matches GMT, UT, or UTC, ignoring
case, is treated as referring to UTC.
- Any word that matches EST, CST, MST, or PST,
ignoring case, is recognized as referring to the time zone in
North America that is five, six, seven, or eight hours west of
Greenwich, respectively. Any word that matches EDT, CDT,
MDT, or PDT, ignoring case, is recognized as
referring to the same time zone, respectively, during daylight
saving time.
Once the entire string s has been scanned, it is converted to a time
result in one of two ways. If a time zone or time-zone offset has been
recognized, then the year, month, day of month, hour, minute, and
second are interpreted in UTC and then the time-zone offset is
applied. Otherwise, the year, month, day of month, hour, minute, and
second are interpreted in the local time zone.
Parameters:
s - a string to be parsed as a date. the distance in milliseconds from January 1, 1970, 00:00:00 GMTrepresented by the string argument. Note that this method willthrow an IllegalArgumentException if the year indicated in s is less than 1583. |
