Convert String to java.util.Date

It sounds like you may want to use something like SimpleDateFormat. http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/text/SimpleDateFormat.html

You declare your date format and then call the parse method with your string.

private static final DateFormat DF = new SimpleDateFormat(...);
Date myDate = DF.parse("1234");

And as Guillaume says, set the timezone!

I think your date format does not make sense. There is no 13:00 PM. Remove the "aaa" at the end of your format or turn the HH into hh.

Nevertheless, this works fine for me:

String testDate = "29-Apr-2010,13:00:14 PM";
DateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("d-MMM-yyyy,HH:mm:ss aaa");
Date date = formatter.parse(testDate);
System.out.println(date);

It prints "Thu Apr 29 13:00:14 CEST 2010".