Table 1. Pattern letters
| Letter |
Date or Time Component |
Presentation |
Examples |
| G |
Era designator |
Text |
AD |
| y |
Year |
Year |
1996; 96 |
| M |
Month in year |
Month |
July; Jul; 07 |
| w |
Week in year |
Number |
27 |
| W |
Week in month |
Number |
2 |
| D |
Day in year |
Number |
189 |
| d |
Day in month |
Number |
10 |
| F |
Day of week in month |
Number |
2 |
| E |
Day in week |
Text |
Tuesday; Tue |
| a |
Am / pm marker |
Text |
PM |
| H |
Hour in day (0-23) |
Number |
0 |
| k |
Hour in day (1-24) |
Number |
24 |
| K |
Hour in am / pm (0-11) |
Number |
0 |
| h |
Hour in am / pm (1-12) |
Number |
12 |
| m |
Minute in hour |
Number |
30 |
| s |
Second in minute |
Number |
55 |
| S |
Millisecond |
Number |
978 |
| z |
Time zone |
General time zone |
Pacific Standard Time; PST; GMT-08:00 |
| Z |
Time zone |
RFC 822 time zone |
-0800 |
Pattern letters are usually repeated, as their number determines the exact presentation:
- Text - If the number of pattern letters is 4 or more, the full form is used;
otherwise a short or abbreviated form is used if available.
- Number - The number of pattern letters is the minimum number of digits, and shorter
numbers are zero-padded to this amount.
- Year - If the number of pattern letters is 2, the year is truncated to 2 digits;
otherwise it is interpreted as a number.
- Month - If the number of pattern letters is 3 or more, the month is interpreted as
text; otherwise, it is interpreted as a number.
- General time zone - Time zones are interpreted as text if they have names. For time
zones representing a GMT offset value, the following syntax is used:
- GMTOffsetTimeZone - GMT Sign Hours : Minutes
- Sign - one of + or -
- Hours - one or two digits
- Minutes - two digits
- Digit - one of 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Hours must be between 0 and 23, and Minutes must be between 00 and 59. The format is
locale independent and digits must be taken from the Basic Latin block of the Unicode
standard.
- RFC 822 time zone: The RFC 822 4-digit time zone format is used:
- RFC822TimeZone - Sign TwoDigitHours Minutes
- TwoDigitHours - a number of two digits
TwoDigitHours must be between 00 and 23.