iCalamus 2: Date format string syntax

Date format string syntax

iCalamus uses the ICU Date Format string syntax which is described in detail as follows.

The date/time format is specified by means of a string time pattern. The count of pattern letters determines the format. In this pattern, letters are reserved as pattern letters:

Table 8: ICU Date format
Symbol	Meaning	Presentation	Example
G	era designator	(Text)	AD
y	year	(Number)	1996
M	month in year	(Text + Number)	July and 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	millisecond	(Number)	978
E	day in week	(Text)	Tuesday
D	day in year	(Number)	189
F	day of week in month	(Number)	2 (2nd Wed in July)
w	week in year	(Number)	27
W	week in month	(Number)	2
a	am/pm marker	(Text)	pm
k	hour in day (1 24)	(Number)	24
K	hour in am/pm (0 11)	(Number)	0
Z	time zone	(Text)	Pacific Standard Time
'	escape for text
''	single quote		'

Text: Four or more, use full form, < 4, use short or abbreviated form if it exists. Example:
EEEE produces Monday, EEE produces Mon.
Number: The minimum number of digits. Shorter numbers are zero-padded to this amount. Example:
If 'm' produces '6', 'mm' produces '06'. Year is handled specially; that is, if the count of 'y' is 2, the Year will be truncated to 2 digits. Example:
If 'yyyy' produces '1997', 'yy' produces '97'.
Text + Number: Three or over, use text, otherwise use number. (for example, 'M' produces '1', 'MM' produces '01', 'MMM' produces 'Jan', and 'MMMM' produces 'January'.)

Hint: 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 ':', '.', ' ', '#' and '@' will appear in the resulting time text even they are not enclosed within single quotes.

A pattern containing any invalid pattern letter results in an error.

Table 9: ICU Date Format samples
Format Pattern	Result
yyyy.MM.dd G 'at' HH:mm:ss Z	1996.07.10 AD at 15:08:56 PDT
EEE, MMM d, ''yy	Wed, July 10, '96
h:mm a	8:08 PM
hh 'o''clock' a, ZZZZ	09 o'clock AM. Eastern Standard Time
K:mm a, Z	9:34 AM, PST
yyyy.MMMM.dd GGG hh:mm aaa	1996.July.10 AD 12:08 PM