[java] How to parse date string to Date?

How do I parse the date string below into a Date object?

String target = "Thu Sep 28 20:29:30 JST 2000";
DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("E MM dd kk:mm:ss z yyyy");
Date result =  df.parse(target);  

Throws exception...

java.text.ParseException: Unparseable date: "Thu Sep 28 20:29:30 JST 2000"
        at java.text.DateFormat.parse(DateFormat.java:337)

Here is a working example:

import java.text.ParseException;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.text.DateFormat;
import java.util.Date;

public class j4496359 {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        try {
            String target = "Thu Sep 28 20:29:30 JST 2000";
            DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("EEE MMM dd kk:mm:ss zzz yyyy");
            Date result =  df.parse(target);
            System.out.println(result); 
        } catch (ParseException pe) {
            pe.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

Will print:

Thu Sep 28 13:29:30 CEST 2000

new SimpleDateFormat("EEE MMM dd kk:mm:ss ZZZ yyyy");

and

new SimpleDateFormat("EEE MMM dd kk:mm:ss Z yyyy");

still runs. However, if your code throws an exception it is because your tool or jdk or any other reason. Because I got same error in my IDE but please check these http://ideone.com/Y2cRr (online ide) with ZZZ and with Z

output is : Thu Sep 28 11:29:30 GMT 2000

A parse exception is a checked exception, so you must catch it with a try-catch when working with parsing Strings to Dates, as @miku suggested...

I had this issue, and I set the Locale to US, then it work.

static DateFormat visitTimeFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss zzz yyyy",Locale.US);

for String "Sun Jul 08 00:06:30 UTC 2012"

String target = "27-09-1991 20:29:30";
DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("dd MM yyyy HH:mm:ss");
Date result =  df.parse(target);
System.out.println(result); 

This works fine?