Appendix

This appendix contains a reference list of date format and country names, as well as their available time zones.

Date Formats

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)

AB 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 a 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

‘

escape for text

(Delimiter)

‘ ‘

single quote

(Literal)

‘

The count of pattern letters determines the format.

Presentation

Usage

(Text)

If the count of pattern letters is 4 or more, use the full form. If the count is less than 4 pattern letters, use short or abbreviated form if one exists.

(Number)

Represents the minimum number of digits. Shorter numbers are zero-padded to this amount. Year is handled specially; that is, if the count of y is 2, the year will be truncated to 2 digits.

(Text & Number)

M is the only format field that can be number or text. If the count of M is 1 or 2 it is to be read as a number. If the count of M is 3 it is read as an abbreviated month name. If the count of M is 4 it shows the full month name.

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