title: java version of python-dateutil
body: <p>Python has a very handy package that can parse nearly any unambiguous date and provides helpful error messages on a parse failure, <a href="http://labix.org/python-dateutil" rel="nofollow">python-dateutil</a>. Comparison to the SimpleDateFormat class is not favorable - AFAICT SimpleDateFormat can only handle one exact date format and the error messages have no granularity. </p>
  
  <p>I've looked through the <a href="http://www.joda.org/joda-time/" rel="nofollow">Joda API</a> but it appears Joda is the same way - only one explicit format can be parsed at a time. </p>
  
  <p>Is there any package or library that reproduces the python-dateutil behavior? Or am I missing something WRT Joda/SimpleDateFormat?</p>