Format Specifiers for Dates

CA Process Automation uses standard Java date and time format pattern strings. Within date and time pattern strings, unquoted letters from 'A' to 'Z' and from 'a' to 'z' are interpreted as pattern letters representing the components of a date or time string. Text can be quoted using single quotes (') or double quotes (") to avoid interpretation. "''" represents a single quote. All other characters are not interpreted; they are copied into the output string during formatting or matched against the input string during parsing.

Letter	Date or Time Component	Presentation	Examples
G	Era designator	Text	AD
y	Year	Year	2009; 09
M	Month in year	Month	July; 07
w	Week in year	Number	27
W	Week in month	Number	2
D	Day in year	Number	189
d	Day in month	Number	10
F	Day of week in month	Number	2
E	Day of week	Text	Tuesday; Tue
a	AM/PM marker	Text	PM
H	Hour in day (0-23)	Number	0
k	Hour in day (1-24)	Number	24
K	Hour in AM/PM (0-11)	Number	0
h	Hour in AM/PM (1-12)	Number	12
m	Minute in hour	Number	30
s	Second in minute	Number	55
S	Millisecond	Number	978
z	Time zone	General time zone	Pacific Standard Time; PST; GMT-08:00
Z	Time zone	RFC 822 time zone	-0800

Patterns are usually repeated; their number determines the exact presentation as shown in the following table:

Presentation	Formatting
Text	If the number of pattern letters is 4 or more, the full form is used; otherwise a short or abbreviated form is accepted, independent of the number of pattern letters.
Number	The number of pattern letters is the minimum number of digits, and shorter numbers are zero-padded to this amount. During parsing the number of pattern letters is ignored unless it is needed to separate two adjacent fields.
Year	If the number of pattern letters is 2, the year is truncated to 2 digits; otherwise it is interpreted as a number. During parsing, if the number of pattern letters is more than 2, the year is interpreted literally, regardless of the number of digits. So using the pattern "MM/dd/yyyy", "01/11/12" parses to Jan 11, 12 A.D.
Month	If the number of pattern letters is 3 or more, the month is interpreted as text; otherwise, it is interpreted as a number.
General Time Zone	Time zones are interpreted as text if they have names. For time zones representing a GMT offset value, the following syntax is used: GMTOffsetTimeZone: GMT Sign Hours : Minutes Sign is either + or - Hours must be between 0 and 23, and one of the following formats: Digit Digit Digit Minutes must be between 00 and 59 and in the following format: Digit Digit Digit is one of the following: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 The format is locale independent and must be taken from the Basic Latin block of the Unicode standard.
RFC 822 time zone	A four digit time zone format is used: RFC822TimeZone: Sing TwoDigitHours Minutes TwoDigitHours must be between 00 and 23. Other definitions are as for general time zones.

SimpleDateFormat also supports localized date and time pattern strings. In these strings, the pattern letters described above may be replaced with other, locale dependent, and pattern letters. SimpleDateFormat does not deal with the localization of text other than the pattern letters; that is up to the client of the class.

The following examples show how date and time patterns are interpreted in the US English locale. The given date and time are 2009-07-04 12:08:56 in the US Pacific time zone.

Date and Time Pattern	Result
"yyyy.MM.dd G 'at' HH:mm:ss z"	2009.07.04 AD at 12:08:56 PDT
"EEE, MMM d, ''yy"	Wed, Jul 4, '09
"h:mm a"	12:08 PM
"hh 'o''clock' a, zzzz"	12 o'clock PM, Pacific Daylight Time
"K:mm a, z"	0:08 PM, PDT
"yyyyy.MMMMM.dd GGG hh:mm aaa"	02009.July.04 AD 12:08 PM
"EEE, d MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss Z"	Wed, 4 Jul 2009 12:08:56 -0700
"yyMMddHHmmssZ"	010704120856-0700
"yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSZ"	2009-07-04T12:08:56.235-0700