Table 22.1. Pattern letters
Letter | Date or Time Component | Presentation | Examples |
---|---|---|---|
G | Era designator | Text | AD |
y | Year | Year | 1996; 96 |
M | Month in year | Month | July; Jul; 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 in 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 |
Pattern letters are usually repeated, as their number determines the exact presentation:
Text: If the number of pattern letters is 4 or more, the full form is used; otherwise a short or abbreviated form is used if available.
Number: the number of pattern letters is the minimum number of digits, and shorter numbers are zero-padded to this amount.
Year: If the number of pattern letters is 2, the year is truncated to 2 digits; otherwise it is interpreted as a number.
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:
GMT Sign Hours : Minutes
one of + -
Digit - Digit Digit
Digit Digit
one of 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Hours must be between 0 and 23, and Minutes must be between 00 and 59. The format is locale independent and digits must be taken from the Basic Latin block of the Unicode standard.
RFC 822 time zone: The RFC 822 4-digit time zone format is used:
Sign TwoDigitHours Minutes
Digit Digit
TwoDigitHours must be between 00 and 23.