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)

The pattern is wrong. You have a 3-letter day abbreviation, so it must be EEE. You have a 3-letter month abbreviation, so it must be MMM. As those day and month abbreviations are locale sensitive, you'd like to explicitly specify the SimpleDateFormat locale to English as well, otherwise it will use the platform default locale which may not be English per se.

public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
    String target = "Thu Sep 28 20:29:30 JST 2000";
    DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("EEE MMM dd kk:mm:ss z yyyy", Locale.ENGLISH);
    Date result =  df.parse(target);  
    System.out.println(result);
}

This prints here

Thu Sep 28 07:29:30 BOT 2000

which is correct as per my timezone.

I would also reconsider if you wouldn't rather like to use HH instead of kk. Read the javadoc for details about valid patterns.

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

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?

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

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"

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...