Java 8 - implementing DateTimeFormatter Parsing Leading to Incorrect LocalDate Values
I'm writing unit tests and I need some guidance on I'm having trouble with parsing dates using `DateTimeFormatter` in Java 8... I have a string representation of a date in the format "MM-dd-yyyy", but when I parse it, I end up with incorrect `LocalDate` values. Here’s the code I've written: ```java import java.time.LocalDate; import java.time.format.DateTimeFormatter; import java.time.format.DateTimeParseException; public class DateParser { public static void main(String[] args) { String dateString = "12-31-2023"; DateTimeFormatter formatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("MM-dd-yyyy"); try { LocalDate date = LocalDate.parse(dateString, formatter); System.out.println("Parsed date: " + date); } catch (DateTimeParseException e) { System.out.println("behavior parsing date: " + e.getMessage()); } } } ``` When I run this code, it outputs: ``` Parsed date: 2023-12-31 ``` This seems correct, but when I try to parse another string, like "01-01-2023", I get a different result: ``` Parsed date: 2023-01-01 ``` This output is expected, but when I later try to format this date back to a string using the same `DateTimeFormatter`, I encounter unexpected results. Here’s how I format it: ```java String formattedDate = date.format(formatter); System.out.println("Formatted date: " + formattedDate); ``` The output I get is fine, but I need to ensure that the parsing and formatting remain consistent, especially when dealing with multiple date formats. I also tried using `ISO_LOCAL_DATE` and other built-in formatters, but they don't apply here since my date strings are in a custom format. Has anyone experienced similar issues with `DateTimeFormatter`? Are there nuances in parsing versus formatting that I might be overlooking? Any guidance would be appreciated! My development environment is Windows. Is there a better approach? I recently upgraded to Java 3.10. Any examples would be super helpful. For reference, this is a production mobile app.