SimpleDateFormat parse returns bad date

I am using SimpleDateFormat in order to parse a String. Here is an example:

private static final SimpleDateFormat longStringFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSS'Z'");
[some code here]
Date dirDate = longStringFormat.parse("2014-04-03T06:00:00.376542900Z");

When I check dirDate in debug mode, or print it, the date I get is Mon Apr 07 14:35:42 FET 2014.

Why do I get such an offset? It cannot be counted as a timezone offset(although it seems already wrong to apply an offset). How can I obtain a Date object depicting the exact same time as the String?

Jon Skeet
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Well, the problem is that you're specifying this value for the number of milliseconds: 376542900. That's 104 hours, 35 minutes, 42 seconds and 900 milliseconds... hence the issue.

Unfortunately, it looks like SimpleDateFormat doesn't have a way of understanding that you're giving it "fractions of a second" instead of "a number of milliseconds". I strongly suspect (although I haven't tried it) that Java 8 would work properly (possibly with a longer pattern) and that Joda Time may also handle it - are either of those an option? Otherwise, you'll need to use string manipulation to get the string into a more manageable form.

(As an aside, you should also set the SimpleDateFormat's time zone to UTC, as that's what's being specified in the text.)

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