How do I search for a range of values in between two Strings in Java

Question

First I know this is bad way to compare dates but I don't understand how to evaluate a strings to include the data between 2 values. For example in this code how would I list not only transactions that occurred on tdate 1 and 2 but also the transactions that fell between them.

tdate information is set up like 11/07/2013

      System.out.println("Start Date: ");
      tdate = in.next();
      System.out.println("End Date: ");
      tdate2 = in.next();

      transactionSet trr = new transactionSet(); 

      for(int idx = 0; idx < ts.getNumTrans(); idx++){

        t = ts.retrieve(idx);
        if (t.getTdate().equals(tdate) || t.getTdate().equals(tdate2)){
         trr.insert(t);      
        }
      }

Answer 1

SimpleDateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat("d/M/yyyy");  // If this is the right format
Date first = format.parse(tdate);
Date second = format.parse(tdate2);
Date toCheck = format.parse(someDate);
if (toCheck.after(first) && toCheck.before(second)){
    // ...
}

You might want to do this in a try/catch block, in case the dates that are input are not formatted correctly.