Java Date determine if DAY is greater <p>I have time stamps as string format Sun Jul 10 17:47:55 EDT 2011</p> <p>I need to determine if the current DAY is greater than the stored day.</p> <p>I will get the current day with <code>Date currentDate = new Date();</code></p> <p>and I will parse my string into a <code>Date</code> object with <code>SimpleDateFormat dateParser = new SimpleDateParser("E MMM d HH:mm:ss z y");</code></p> <p>but using the "currentDate.after()" function, or the <code>currentDate.compare()</code> function will only tell me if ANY date is greater or less than, which includes by the hour,minute or second.</p> <p>So My next hunch would be to convert the date into the day of the year, and compare the new integers, if integer1>integer2, then.. but how would I do that?</p> <p>I also considered breaking the string up to a substring consisting of only the first half of the stored string date. <code>Sun Jul 10</code> to <code>Sun Jul 10</code> but the problem here is that the day value is sometimes 1 digit and othertimes 2 digits.</p> <p>Also I think the <code>Calendar</code> abstract class is the best way to go about this, but I am unsure, and currently in a fog about how to convert the Date objects into the Calendar object for comparison!</p> <p>Insight appreciated</p>