On 09/29/2011 04:21 PM, Scott Serr wrote: To check the class of an object, just call: $datetool.class For me, it prints the expected classname: class org.apache.velocity.tools.generic.ComparisonDateTool Reading the Javadoc of DateTool, it states: "It is useful for accessing and formatting the "current" date as well as for formatting arbitrary Date and Calendar objects." So it looks like indeed it can only be used with real dates, not strings, although the javadoc of ComparisonDateTool suggests otherwise. So, I looked at the code, since that is the definitive documentation, and it is supposed to work with strings. Looking deeper, it seems that the problem is that Strings are converted to dates using a standard date format, so you can only parse dates using the DEFAULT format defined in java.text.DateFormat. So, while this doesn't work: $datetool.toDate('2005-07-04') This works: $datetool.toDate('Jul 4, 2005 09:00:00 AM') It also works if you specify the date format to use: $datetool.toDate('yyyy-MM-hh', '2005-07-04') So, to solve your problem, you should first parse the dates, then compare them. -- Sergiu Dumitriu http://purl.org/net/sergiu/