You can change the date & time format for a given language in the Edit language window, in its Language metadata tab.
The pattern in Date format and Time format fields can be changed to show date/time in a different format.
Pattern
Symbol | Meaning | Presentation | Example |
G | era designator | Text | AD |
y | year | Number | 1996 |
M | month in year | Text or Number | July (or) 07 |
d | day in month | Number | 10 |
h | hour in am/pm (1-12) | Number | 12 |
H | hour in day (0-23) | Number | 0 |
m | minute in hour | Number | 30 |
s | second in minute | Number | 55 |
S | fractional second | Number | 978 |
E | day of week | Text | Tuesday |
a | am/pm marker | Text | PM |
k | hour in day (1-24) | Number | 24 |
K | our in am/pm (0-11) | Number | 0 |
z | time zone | Text | Pacific Standard |
Z | time zone (RFC 822) | Number | -0800 |
v | time zone (generic) | Text | Pacific Time |
' | escape for text | Delimiter | 'Date=' |
'' | single quote | Literal | 'o''clock' |
The number of pattern letters influences the format, as follows:
Text
if 4 or more, then use the full form; if less than 4, use short or abbreviated form if it exists (e.g., "EEEE" produces "Monday", "EEE" produces "Mon")
Number
the minimum number of digits. Shorter numbers are zero-padded to this amount (e.g. if "m" produces "6", "mm" produces "06"). The year is handled specially; that is, if the count of 'y' is 2, the Year will be truncated to 2 digits. (e.g., if "yyyy" produces "1997", "yy" produces "97".) Unlike other fields, fractional seconds are padded on the right with zero.
Text or Number
3 or more, use text, otherwise, use number. (e.g. "M" produces "1", "MM" produces "01", "MMM" produces "Jan", and "MMMM" produces "January".
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 ':', '.', ' ' (space), '#' and '@' will appear in the resulting time text even they are not embraced within single quotes.
Examples
Pattern | Formatted Text |
"yyyy.MM.dd G 'at' HH:mm:ss vvvv" | 1996.07.10 AD at 15:08:56 Pacific Time |
"EEE, MMM d, ''yy" | Wed, July 10, '96 |
"h:mm a" | 12:08 PM |
"hh 'o''clock' a, zzzz" | 12 o'clock PM, Pacific Daylight Time |
"K:mm a, vvv" | 0:00 PM, PT |
"yyyyy.MMMMM.dd GGG hh:mm aaa" | 01996.July.10 AD 12:08 PM |
Notice, that patterns are case sensitive!