Date and Time formatting

Format specifiers

Excerpt from the strftime man page:

Ordinary characters placed in the format string are copied to s without conversion. Conversion specifications are introduced by a `%' character, and terminated by a conversion specifier character, and are replaced in s as follows:

%a

   The abbreviated weekday name according to the current locale. 

%A

   The full weekday name according to the current locale. 

%b

   The abbreviated month name according to the current locale. 

%B

   The full month name according to the current locale. 

%c

   The preferred date and time representation for the current locale. 

%C

   The century number (year/100) as a 2-digit integer. (SU) 

%d

   The day of the month as a decimal number (range 01 to 31). 

%D

   Equivalent to %m/%d/%y. (Yecch --- for Americans only. Americans should note that in other countries %d/%m/%y is rather common. This means that in international context this format is ambiguous and should not be used.) (SU) 

%e

   Like %d, the day of the month as a decimal number, but a leading zero is replaced by a space. (SU) 

%E

   Modifier: use alternative format, see below. (SU) 

%F

   Equivalent to %Y-%m-%d (the ISO 8601 date format). (C99) 

%G

   The ISO 8601 year with century as a decimal number. The 4-digit year corresponding to the ISO week number (see %V). This has the same format and value as %y, except that if the ISO week number belongs to the previous or next year, that year is used instead. (TZ) 

%g

   Like %G, but without century, i.e., with a 2-digit year (00-99). (TZ) 

%h

   Equivalent to %b. (SU) 

%H

   The hour as a decimal number using a 24-hour clock (range 00 to 23). 

%I

   The hour as a decimal number using a 12-hour clock (range 01 to 12). 

%j

   The day of the year as a decimal number (range 001 to 366). 

%k

   The hour (24-hour clock) as a decimal number (range 0 to 23); single digits are preceded by a blank. (See also %H.) (TZ) 

%l

   The hour (12-hour clock) as a decimal number (range 1 to 12); single digits are preceded by a blank. (See also %I.) (TZ) 

%m

   The month as a decimal number (range 01 to 12). 

%M

   The minute as a decimal number (range 00 to 59). 

%n

   A newline character. (SU) 

%O

   Modifier: use alternative format, see below. (SU) 

%p

   Either `AM' or `PM' according to the given time value, or the corresponding strings for the current locale. Noon is treated as `pm' and midnight as `am'. 

%P

   Like %p but in lowercase: `am' or `pm' or a corresponding string for the current locale. (GNU) 

%r

   The time in a.m. or p.m. notation. In the POSIX locale this is equivalent to `%I:%M:%S %p'. (SU) 

%R

   The time in 24-hour notation (%H:%M). (SU) For a version including the seconds, see %T below. 

%s

   The number of seconds since the Epoch, i.e., since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC. (TZ) 

%S

   The second as a decimal number (range 00 to 60). (The range is up to 60 to allow for occasional leap seconds.) 

%t

   A tab character. (SU) 

%T

   The time in 24-hour notation (%H:%M:%S). (SU) 

%u

   The day of the week as a decimal, range 1 to 7, Monday being 1. See also %w. (SU) 

%U

   The week number of the current year as a decimal number, range 00 to 53, starting with the first Sunday as the first day of week 01. See also %V and %W. 

%V

   The ISO 8601:1988 week number of the current year as a decimal number, range 01 to 53, where week 1 is the first week that has at least 4 days in the current year, and with Monday as the first day of the week. See also %U and %W. (SU) 

%w

   The day of the week as a decimal, range 0 to 6, Sunday being 0. See also %u. 

%W

   The week number of the current year as a decimal number, range 00 to 53, starting with the first Monday as the first day of week 01. 

%x

   The preferred date representation for the current locale without the time. 

%X

   The preferred time representation for the current locale without the date. 

%y

   The year as a decimal number without a century (range 00 to 99). 

%Y

   The year as a decimal number including the century. 

%z

   The time-zone as hour offset from GMT. Required to emit RFC 822-conformant dates (using "%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S %z"). (GNU) 

%Z

   The time zone or name or abbreviation. 

%%

   A literal `%' character.