By including the following characters in the date format, you can specify a broad range of date formats:
| Symbol Meaning | Presentation Example |
|---|---|
| G | era designator (Text) AD or BC |
| y | year (Number) 1996 |
| M | month in year (Text & Number) July & 07 |
| d | day in month (Number) 10 |
| h | hour in am/pm (1 ~ 12) (Number) 12 |
| H | hour in day (0 ~ 23) (Number) 0 |
| m | minute in hour (Number) 30 |
| s | second in minute (Number) 55 |
| S | millisecond (Number) 978 |
| E | day in week (Text) Tuesday |
| D | day in year (Number) 189 |
| F | day of week in month (Number) 27 |
| w | week in year (Number) 27 |
| W | week in month (Number) 2 |
| a | am/pm marker (Text) PM |
| k | hour in day (1 ~ 24) (Number) 24 |
| K | hour in am/pm (0 ~ 11) (Number) 0 |
| z | time zone (Text) Pacific Standard Time |
Any characters in the pattern that are not in the ranges of [’a’..’z’] and [’A’..’Z’] will be treated as quoted text. For instance, characters like ’:’,’.’,’ ’,’#’ and ’@’ will appear in the resulting time text even though they are not embraced within single quotes.
| Date Format | Result |
|---|---|
yyyy.MM.dd G ’at’ hh:mm:ss z |
1996.07.10 AD at 15:08:56 PDT |
EEE, MMM dd, ’ ’yy |
Wed, Jul 10, ’96 |
h:mm a |
7:08 PM |
hh ’o’ ’clock’ a, zzzz |
07 o’ clock PM, Pacific Daylight Time |
K:mm a, z |
7:00 PM, PST |
yyyy.MMMM.dd GGG hh:mm aaa |
1996.July.10 AD 12:08 PM |