When you make a call of the variety

long l = d.parse("Sat, 12 Aug 1995 12:30:00 GMT-0430");

where d is an instance of the Date class, you get

 java.lang.IllegalArgumentException
at java.util.Date.parse(Date.java)
at test.main(test.java:7)

Here is code that is almost a test:
import java.lang.*;
import java.io.*;
import java.util.Date;
class test {
public static void main (String arg[]) throws IOException {
 Date d = new Date();
long l = d.parse("Sat, 12 Aug 1995 12:30:00 GMT-0430");

}

____Customer Report Follows____
>From: ED <###@###.###>
Mime-Version: 1.0
To: java@java
Subject: Bug in Date Class
X-Url: http://java.sun.com/intouch.html
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Hi, Guys,

I just figured out a bug in the Date Class,

In funciton Parse (line of 248)source code Date.java, the char "-" has
been ignored. But it was checked for GMT time zone and "-" may be used
for east timezone and program will cause IllegalArgumentException.

Ed Zhou (###@###.###)

[meiphen 8/28/96]
Another customer reports the same problem:

I believe there is a bug in the parse(String) routine in
java.util.Date, because it does not handle negative timezone offsets.
For example:

Date foo = new Date("Fri, 24 May 1996 10:55:11 -0600");

This throws an IllegalArgumentException, because of the "-0600". It
appears to me that in java.util.Date on line 248:

if (c <= ' ' || c == ',' || c == '-')
continue;

The minus sign should not be included in this list. When I change the
line to:

if (c <= ' ' || c == ',')
continue;

...the date parses correctly. I do not know what other side-effects
this may cause however.