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Date Formatting Strings

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isubiker edited this page Sep 8, 2011 · 2 revisions

Date Formatting Strings (strftime)

When outputting date values as bucket labels, format strings are used to customize the outputted date. The formatting strings are inspired by strftime. The formatting options that are available depend on the platform in which the server is running. Included on this page are the formatting options for Linux.

The format string for the format paramater when creating an auto-bucketed range follows a slightly different format than is typically used with strftime. This is due to the fact that with this formatting string it is common to need access to the dates on both the lower and upper bounds of the bucket. Typically strftime transforms one date into a string when given a format, but in this case we need to extract bits from two dates to create a string from a given format. For these format strings, the first date is accessed via the typical (and documented below) options using the % sign. To access the second date, use a @ sign instead of a % sign. For example, let's say the bucket has a lower date of 2010-01-01T00:00:00 and an upper date of 2010-02-01T00:00:00:

%B %Y - @B @Y

Will produce a bucket label of:

January 2010 - February 2010

Linux formatting options

  • %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).
  • %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 61).
  • %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 RFC822-conformant dates (using "%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S %z"). (GNU)
  • %Z - The time zone or name or abbreviation.
  • %+ - The date and time in date(1) format. (TZ)
  • %% - A literal `%' character.
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