DATEFORM – Change the format of a date variable
This function changes a date and/or a time to a new format.
DATEFORM(<date>,<informat>,<outformat>)
Where:
<date>
- The date and/or the time whose format is to be changed.
<informat>
- The format of the input date.
<outformat>
- The format of the output date that is to be created.
The format strings can be made up as follows:
- YYYY
- Year, in the complete format.
- YY
- Last two digits of the year.
- CC
- Century part of the year.
- MM
- Month
- MMM
- First three characters of the month, in English and upper-case format. For example,
JAN
for January. - Month_name
- Complete name of the month. Valid only for the output date.
- W
- Numeric day of the week, starting from 1 for Monday.
- WW
- First two characters of the day, in English and upper-case format. For example,
MO
for Monday. - WWW
- First three characters of the day, in English and upper-case format. For example,
MON
for Monday. - DD
- Day.
- HH
- Hour.
- NN
- Minutes.
- SS
- Seconds.
- XX
- Hundredth of seconds.
Consider that:
- If there is no time part in the input format, but it is in the output format, the values will be set to 00 for each field.
- If there is no date part in the input format, but it is in the output format, they will be
set to their format placeholder for each field. For example,
MM
. - The equal sign (=) can be used in place of a date to indicate the current date.
- +n can be used in place of a date to indicate n days after the current date.
- -n can be used in place of a date to indicate n days before the current date.
- In all cases, the relative dates must be contained in quotes for function calls.
- To use textual months in another language, use the
OPTIONS MMMM
keyword to set months in an alternative language. - If the text version of a month or weekday does not match any known month or weekday, their
format placeholder will be returned as question marks in the output. For example
??
- If the month or weekday placeholders are in lower case in the output format, the month or
day will be output in mixed case. For example,
Mon
. - The day of the week is always calculated from the date part of the input date, regardless of what day could be in the input string.