How Can I Parse Variable Date Formats (e.g., 9/09, 9/1/2009, 9-1-2009) Efficiently in Java?

Parsing Variable Date Formats with SimpleDateFormat

When facing a scenario where dates are entered in inconsistent formats, SimpleDateFormat can be utilized for efficient parsing.

To accommodate the given formats:

• 9/09, 9/2009, 09/2009: A pattern of "M/y" captures these variations, where "M" represents the month and "y" the year.
• 9/1/2009: For dates with a day component, a pattern of "M/d/y" should be used, where "d" additionally represents the day.
• 9-1-2009: A similar pattern, "M-d-y", is appropriate for dates using a hyphen as the delimiter.

It's not necessary to nest try/catch blocks. Instead, iterate over multiple SimpleDateFormat objects with varying patterns.

A method like the following can be implemented:

// ...
List<String> formatStrings = List.of("M/y", "M/d/y", "M-d-y");
// ...

Date tryParse(String dateString) {
    for (String formatString : formatStrings) {
        try {
            return new SimpleDateFormat(formatString).parse(dateString);
        } catch (ParseException ignored) {}
    }
    return null;
}

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