I want to convert a String into Timestamp, the pattern for which is unknown. Is there any API given by java which allows us to feed in the string and returns the possible patterns that could work with it? I understand that one could have some pre-defined patterns against which the String can be parsed and checked. But, since this is a timestamp, the number combinations of different dates and times will be quite a lot. So, was looking for an efficient way of figuring out the pattern of the String-Timestamp.