JAVA SimpleDateFormat returns wrong format [duplicate]

Answer 1

You output the date using

System.out.println(thedate);

This doesn't use the date format you used to parse the date, but uses the toString() method of java.util.Date. This is why you see the date being print in a different format than expected.

To use you date format for parsing and output do something like this:

DateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("dd.MM.yyyy HH:mm");
Date thedate = dateFormat.parse(newtoday);
System.out.println(dateFormat.format(thedate));