java.util.Date.parse() does not parse dates of the form "2/4/96" correctly.

The Java Language Specification has a very detailed description of the Date
class' parse method in chapter 20, section 20.3.31. In its discussion of
how it treats numbers that it finds in its argument it says:

    If the number is followed by a slash, it is regarded as a month (it is
    decreased by 1 to produce a number in the range 0 to 11), unless a month
has
    already been recognized, in which case it is regarded as a day of the month.

The following code reproduces the problem.

   import java.util.Date;
    public class DateParse {
        public static void main(String argv[]) {
            Date d = new Date("2/4/96");
            System.out.println("getMonth() returns " + d.getMonth());
            System.out.println(d);
        }
    }

Output:

java DateParse
getMonth() returns 2
Mon Mar 04 00:00:00 EST 1996


According to the spec parse() should have decremented the month by one
to provide 0 based enumeration. getMonth() should have returned 1 and the month Feb.
Correct output should have been:

java DateParse
getMonth() returns 1
Mon Feb 04 00:00:00 EST 1996