DateTime masks

A date/time mask is a string expression containing any valid combination of components and, optionally, separators. For example, in the date/time mask yy/mm/dd, the separator character is a /, and the components are yy, mm, and dd. You can specify components in any order. For usage examples, see date/time mask samples.

Components

The following components are valid date/time mask components.

Table 1. Table of date/time mask components
Component	Meaning
dd	Two-digit day of the month (1-31).
ddd	Three-digit day of the year (1-366).
mm	One- or two-digit month (1-12).
mon	Three-letter abbreviation of the month (Jan-Dec).
month	Full name of the month (January-December).
yy	Two-digit year (00-99). Note: Use the four-digit component (yyyy) rather than the two-digit component to clearly identify the century and eliminate any ambiguity problems. With the two-digit component, internally the first two digits are assumed to be 20, which might not be your intention.
yyyy	Four-digit year (0000-9999).
w	One-digit day of the week (0-6, 0 = Sunday, 6 = Saturday).
day	Three-letter abbreviation of the day (Sat-Sun).
dayname	Full name of the day (Sunday-Saturday).
hh	Hour of day (0-23).
tt	Minute of hour (0-59).
ss	Second of minute (0-59).
am	Indicates the time as am or pm (as opposed to a 24-hour clock).
xs:datetime	Indicates the date and time in XML format as described by W3C XML Schema and ISO 8601. The format is: `CCYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss` All fields must be present and can optionally be preceded by a sign and leading figures, if needed, and followed by fractional digits for the seconds and a time zone. The time zone can be specified by using the letter Z, which identifies UTC, or by the difference of time with UTC.

Separators

The following symbols are valid separators. Separators is optional.

Table 2. Table of valid separator symbols
Separator symbol	Separator symbol	Separator symbol
,	.	/
-	<	>
?	:	\|
^	;
[	]	{
}	_	=
@	%	+
(	)	*
&	#	<space>

Samples

In all the examples, the time is equivalent to:

Wednesday, June 8, 2000 at 32 seconds after 2:05 p.m.

Table 3. Table of time date masks and results for the example
Mask	Results
mon. dd, yyyy	Jun. 8, 2000
month dd, yyyy	June 8, 2000
mon dd, yy (day)	Jun 8, 00 (Wed)
''hhttss	140532
hh:tt am	02:05 pm
dd-mm-yy, hh:tt	8-6-00, 14:05
mm/dd/yyyy, hh:tt:ss am	6/8/2000, 02:05:032 pm
ddd, hh:tt:ss	167, 14:05:32
tt:ss am	05:32 pm
xs:datetime	2000-06-08T14:05:32