Date formats

Format strings are used to control the format of dates.

A date format string can contain one or a combination of the following elements:

Table 1. Date format tags
Tag	Variable width availability	Description	Value range	Options
%d	import	Day of month, variable width	1...31	s
%dd		Day of month, fixed width	01...31	s
%ddd	with v option	Day of year	1...366	s, v
%m	import	Month of year, variable width	1...12	s
%mm		Month of year, fixed width	01...12	s
%mmm		Month of year, short name, locale specific	Jan, Feb ...	t, u, w
%mmmm	import/export	Month of year, full name, locale specific	January, February ...	t, u, w, -`N`, +`N`
%yy		Year of century	00...99	s
%yyyy		Four digit year	0001 ...9999
%NNNNyy		Cutoff year plus year of century	yy = 00...99	s
%e		Day of week, Sunday = day 1	1...7
%E		Day of week, Monday = day 1	1...7
%eee		Weekday short name, locale specific	Sun, Mon ...	t, u, w
%eeee	import/export	Weekday long name, locale specific	Sunday, Monday ...	t, u, w, -`N`, +`N`
%W	import	Week of year (ISO 8601, Mon)	1...53	s
%WW		Week of year (ISO 8601, Mon)	01...53	s

When you specify a date format string, prefix each component with the percent symbol (%). Separate the string's components with a literal character.

The default date format is %yyyy-%mm-%dd.

Where indicated the tags can represent variable-width date elements. Variable-width date elements can omit leading zeroes without causing errors.

The following options can be used in the format string where indicated in the table:

s: Specify this option to allow leading spaces in date formats. The s option is specified in the form:; %(tag,s); Where tag is the format string. For example:; %(m,s); indicates a numeric month of year field in which values can contain leading spaces or zeroes and be one or two characters wide. If you specified the following date format property:; %(d,s)/%(m,s)/%yyyy; Then the following dates would all be valid:; 8/ 8/1958; 08/08/1958; 8/8/1958

v: Use this option in conjunction with the %ddd tag to represent day of year in variable-width format. So the following date property:; %(ddd,v); represents values in the range 1 to 366. (If you omit the v option then the range of values would be 001 to 366.)

u: Use this option to render text elements such as day or month name in uppercase text on output.

w: Use this option to render text elements such as day or month name in lowercase text on output.

t: Use this option to render text elements such as day or month name in titlecase (initial capitals) on output.

The u, w, and t options are mutually exclusive. They affect how text is formatted for output. Input dates will still be correctly interpreted regardless of case.

-N: Specify this option to left justify long day or month names so that the other elements in the date will be aligned.

+N: Specify this option to right justify long day or month names so that the other elements in the date will be aligned.

Names are left justified or right justified within a fixed width field of N characters (where N is between 1 and 99). Names will be truncated if necessary. The following are examples of justification in use:

%dd-%(mmmm,-5)-%yyyy

21-Augus-2006

%dd-%(mmmm,-10)-%yyyy

21-August    -2005

%dd-%(mmmm,+10)-%yyyy

21-    August-2005

The locale for determining the setting of the day and month names can be controlled through the locale tag. This has the format:

%(L,'locale')

Where locale specifies the locale to be set using the language_COUNTRY.variant naming convention supported by ICU. See IBM® InfoSphere® DataStage® and QualityStage® Globalization Guide for a list of locales. The default locale for month names and weekday names markers is English unless overridden by a %L tag or the APT_IMPEXP_LOCALE environment variable (the tag takes precedence over the environment variable if both are set).

Use the locale tag in conjunction with your time format, for example the format string:

%(L,'es')%eeee, %dd %mmmm %yyyy

Specifies the Spanish locale and would result in a date with the following format:

miércoles, 21 septembre 2005

The format string is subject to the restrictions laid out in the following table. A format string can contain at most one tag from each row. In addition some rows are mutually incompatible, as indicated in the 'incompatible with' column. When some tags are used the format string requires that other tags are present too, as indicated in the 'requires' column.

Table 2. Format tag restrictions
Element	Numeric format tags	Text format tags	Requires	Incompatible with
year	%yyyy, %yy, %[nnnn]yy	-	-	-
month	%mm, %m	%mmm, %mmmm	year	week of year
day of month	%dd, %d	-	month	day of week, week of year
day of year	%ddd		year	day of month, day of week, week of year
day of week	%e, %E	%eee, %eeee	month, week of year	day of year
week of year	%WW		year	month, day of month, day of year

When a numeric variable-width input tag such as %d or %m is used, the field to the immediate right of the tag (if any) in the format string cannot be either a numeric tag, or a literal substring that starts with a digit. For example, all of the following format strings are invalid because of this restriction:

%d%m-%yyyy

%d%mm-%yyyy

%(d)%(mm)-%yyyy

%h00 hours

The year_cutoff is the year defining the beginning of the century in which all two-digit years fall. By default, the year cutoff is 1900; therefore, a two-digit year of 97 represents 1997.

You can specify any four-digit year as the year cutoff. All two-digit years then specify the next possible year ending in the specified two digits that is the same or greater than the cutoff. For example, if you set the year cutoff to 1930, the two-digit year 30 corresponds to 1930, and the two-digit year 29 corresponds to 2029.

This property is mutually exclusive with days_since, text, and julian.

You can include literal text in your date format, for example as separators. Any Unicode character other than null, backslash, or the percent sign can be used (although it is better to avoid control codes and other non-graphic characters). The following table lists special tags and escape sequences:

Tag	Escape sequence
%%	literal percent sign
\%	literal percent sign
\n	newline
\t	horizontal tab
\\	single backslash