Fastest way to parse a YYYYMMdd date in Java

Question

When parsing a YYYYMMdd date, e.g. 20120405 for 5th April 2012, what is the fastest method?

int year = Integer.parseInt(dateString.substring(0, 4));
int month = Integer.parseInt(dateString.substring(4, 6));
int day = Integer.parseInt(dateString.substring(6));

vs.

int date = Integer.parseInt(dateString)
year = date / 10000;
month = (date % 10000) / 100; 
day = date % 100;

mod 10000 for month would be because mod 10000 results in MMdd and the result / 100 is MM

In the first example we do 3 String operations and 3 "parse to int", in the second example we do many things via modulo.

What is faster? Is there an even faster method?

Answer 1

SimpleDateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyyMMdd");
Date date = format.parse("20120405");