I recently came across a task where i have to get all Fridays in a date range. I wrote a small piece of code and was surprised see some strange behaviour.
Below is my code:
public class Friday {
    public static void main(String[]args){
        String start = "01/01/2009";
        String end = "12/09/2013";
        String[] startTokens = start.split("/");
        String[] endTokens = end.split("/");
        Calendar  startCal = new GregorianCalendar(Integer.parseInt(startTokens[2]),Integer.parseInt(startTokens[1])-1,Integer.parseInt(startTokens[0]));
        Calendar endCal = new GregorianCalendar(Integer.parseInt(endTokens[2]),Integer.parseInt(endTokens[1])-1, Integer.parseInt(endTokens[0]));
        int startYear = Integer.parseInt(startTokens[2]);
        int endYear = Integer.parseInt(endTokens[2]); 
        int startWeek = startCal.get(Calendar.WEEK_OF_YEAR);
        int endWeek = endCal.get(Calendar.WEEK_OF_YEAR);
        Calendar cal = new GregorianCalendar();
        cal.set(Calendar.DAY_OF_WEEK, Calendar.FRIDAY);
    //  cal.setMinimalDaysInFirstWeek(7);
        ArrayList<String> main = new ArrayList<String>();
        while(startYear <= endYear ){
               cal.set(Calendar.YEAR, startYear);
               System.out.println(cal.getMinimalDaysInFirstWeek());
                if(startYear == endYear){
                    main.addAll(getFridays(startWeek, endWeek, cal));
                }
                else{
                    main.addAll(getFridays(startWeek, 52, cal));
                    startWeek = 1;
                }
                startYear =startYear +1;
        }
        for(String s: main){
            System.err.println(s);
        }
    }
    public static ArrayList<String> getFridays(int startWeek, int endWeek, Calendar cal){
        ArrayList<String> fridays = new ArrayList<String>();
        while(startWeek <= endWeek){
            cal.set(Calendar.WEEK_OF_YEAR, startWeek);
            fridays.add(cal.getTime().toString());
            startWeek = startWeek+1;
        }
        return fridays;
    }
}
Now when I ran the code i noticed that Fridays of 2011 are missing. After some debugging and online browsing i figured that Calendar.WEEK_OF_YEAR is locale specific and I have to use setMinimalDaysInFirstWeek(7) to fix it.
So uncommented the related line in the above code.
From what I understood now first week of year should start from full week of year.
For example Jan 1 2010 is friday. But it should not show up in results as i configured it to treat that week begins from Jan 3rd. But Now i still see the Jan 1 as friday
I am very much confused. Can some one explain why it is happening?
These Stackoverflow articles helped me a bit:
 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    