The date pattern is intended to the date format representation. The specified date pattern symbols are given in the table below.

Symbol

Description

y number of 'y' letters defines the minimum number of digits in the year representation. If the count of 'y' is four or greater than four, a year is represented by four digits, otherwise a year is truncated to two digits (a century is not represented)
M number of 'M' letters defines a format of the month representation. If the count of 'M' letters is equal or greater than three, the text representation of a month is used, otherwise the numerical representation is used
d number of 'd' letters defines the minimum number of digits in the day in month representation. If the number of  'd' letters in the pattern is greater than the number of digits in the day number, a zero is added to the left of the day number
' (single quote) delimiter to use a text in the pattern. The text should be enclosed by a pair of the single quotes

Notes:

  1. Any characters in the pattern that are not in the ranges of ['a'..'z'] and ['A'..'Z'] (e.g. characters like ':', '.', ' ', '#' and '@' ) are treated as a text even if they are not enclosed by a pair of the single quotes.
  2. To get a single quote symbol in a date, you should use the pair of the single quote symbols in the pattern.

To create a date pattern, you can use the specified date pattern symbols in any order. Examples of the representation of the same date are given in the table below.

Pattern

Date Representation

yyyy.MM.dd 1996.07.01
MMM d, '' yy July 1, ' 96
yyyy.MMMMM.dd 1996.July.01
' Today :' yyyy.MMMMM.dd Today : 1996.July.01