Groovy - simple date reformatting

Question

I am using the below code to convert "Oct 09, 2018" to "20181009".

import java.text.SimpleDateFormat
import java.util.Date

def olddate = "Oct 09, 2018"
def date = Date.parse( "MMM DD, yyyy", olddate )
def newDate = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyyMMdd").format(date) 

The problem is that I get the below output:

20180109

Irrespective of what date I convert the code returns the month as January (01)

Answer 1

"MMM DD, yyyy is wrong. Change to MMM dd, yyyy; D means "day of year", while d is "day of month". See e.g. https://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/text/SimpleDateFormat.html