Compare calendar time by minutes

Question

I'd like to calculate the difference between "MON 17:00" and "Tue 5:00" in "minutes" How can I achieve this using Java. I don't quite understand how to use calendar and simpleDateFormat doesn't support the Mon,Tue,Wed,e.t.c feature. Any help?

The problem only involves week therefore "SUN 00:00" as the earliest and "SAT 23:59" as the latest.

P.S. given many strings in that format, I also would like to sort them from what happens first, to what happens last. Because I think sorting them first would make the task (determining the difference) easier.

Answer 1

May be something like this

import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.Locale;
import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;

public class DateCompare {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        try {
            final String start = "Mon 17:00";
            final String end = "Tue 5:00";
            SimpleDateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("EEE HH:mm", Locale.US);
            long diffMinutes = TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS.toMinutes(formatter.parse(end).getTime() - formatter.parse(start).getTime()); 
            System.out.println(diffMinutes + " minutes");
        } catch(Exception ex) {
            ex.printStackTrace();
        }

    }

}