Incorrect 'DateTimeFormat' pattern

Reports incorrect date time format patterns.

The following errors are reported:

Unsupported pattern letters, like "TT"
Using reserved characters, like "#"
Incorrect use of padding
Unbalanced brackets
Incorrect amount of consecutive pattern letters

Examples:

  DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("[][]]"); // Closing ']' without previous opening '['
  DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("TT"); // Illegal pattern letter 'T'
  DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("{"); // Use of reserved character '{'
  DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("MMMMMM"); // Too many consecutive pattern letters 'M'

Locating this inspection

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IncorrectDateTimeFormat

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Settings or Preferences | Editor | Inspections | Java | Probable bugs

New in 2022.3

Inspection ID: IncorrectDateTimeFormat

Suppressing Inspection

You can suppress this inspection by placing the following comment marker before the code fragment where you no longer want messages from this inspection to appear:

//noinspection IncorrectDateTimeFormat

More detailed instructions as well as other ways and options that you have can be found in the product documentation:

IntelliJ IDEA 2025.3

Inspection Details
By default bundled with:	IntelliJ IDEA 2025.3, Qodana for JVM 2025.3,

Last modified: 03 December 2025