Question: how would you write te date if i have a date and all i want is the month and the day like this (mm/dd) and then turn the month like this July, 08

Answer: 
Let me see if I understood well. 

You have a date like "07/08" and you want "July, 08"?

You could try [SimpleDateFormat](http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/text/SimpleDateFormat.html)

```
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.text.ParseException;

class Test {
    public static void main( String [] args ) throws ParseException  {

        SimpleDateFormat in  = new SimpleDateFormat("MM/dd");
        SimpleDateFormat out = new SimpleDateFormat("MMMM, dd");

        System.out.println( out.format( in.parse("07/08") ) );

        // Verbose 
        //String input = "07/09";           
        //Date  date = in.parse( input );  
        //String output = out.format( date );
        //System.out.println( output );
    }
}

```
The [SimpleDateFormat](http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/text/SimpleDateFormat.html) is your friend here. If you already have a `java.util.Date` object, just format it using the desired *pattern* (refer to the javadoc for details on date and time patterns):

```
SimpleDateFormat out = new SimpleDateFormat("MMMM, dd");
String s = out.format(date); // date is your existing Date object here

```

(EDIT: I'm adding some details as the original question is unclear and I may have missed the real goal.

If you have a `String` representation of a date in a given format (e.g. MM/dd) and want to transform the representation, you'll need 2 `SimpleDateFormat` as pointed out by others: one to parse the `String` into a `Date` and another one to format the `Date`.

```
SimpleDateFormat in = new SimpleDateFormat("MM/dd");
Date date = in.parse(dateAsString); // dateAsString is your String representation here

```

Then use the code snippet seen above to format it.)