@DATEFMT — Writes a date and time using a format string.

Syntax:
%@DATEFMT[date time,format]

Enter the date in ISO 8601 format, and the time in 24-hour format. Use an asterisk for the current date and time. The time is optional. If you specify a date without a time, the default time is midnight.

The supported range of dates is 1601-01-01 through 9999-12-31.

The format string may include:

Note that you will need to double the percent signs to prevent variable expansion from eating them. Other characters in format will be included as-is.

¹  These follow the ISO 8601 week-numbering scheme: every week begins on Monday, ends on Sunday, and belongs to the year in which the majority of its days fall. Monday is day 1, Sunday is day 7.

²  %U and %W count weeks beginning with Sunday (%U) or Monday (%W). Week 1 begins with the first Sunday (Monday) in the year. If the year does not begin with a Sunday (Monday), then days before the first Sunday (Monday) return a week number of 0.

³  %#Z returns a letter code for the time zone, ranging from Y for UTC-12 through M for UTC+12. UTC returns Z. If the current time zone is more than 12 hours ahead of or behind UTC, or if it is not an even hour offset, this token returns -.

There are also several modifier characters which may be included in a token, between the percent sign and the letter:

If a token is marked with a ✓ in the second column, you can include a number sign between the percent sign and the letter to suppress leading zeros or spaces. For example, %H may return the hour with a leading zero; %#H returns the hour with no leading zero.

In a few cases, e.g. %#c, %#X, and %#x, the number sign does not suppress leading zeros but instead changes the meaning of the token. These special cases have separate lines in the list of tokens above.

If a token is marked with a ✓ in the third column, you can add an uppercase letter O between the percent sign and the letter to return a value using Roman numerals. This format only works with a few tokens: those which return a numeric value always greater than zero and less than ten thousand. %H and %k are a special case, as the hour can be zero. If the hour is 0 (midnight), then %OH and %Ok will return XXIV.

Occasionally you may want an ordinal number. Put a question mark between the percent sign and the letter to append an (English) ordinal suffix:

You can get English names, rather than local names, for months and days with E. This modifier only works with %a, %A, %b, %h, and %B.

If a token returns a string, you can also use an exclamation point to make the string all uppercase, or a comma to make it all lowercase:

You can use the ~ modifier to replace ASCII digits with local digit forms. This will only be useful if (A) your locale specifies alternate digits forms, and (B) your font includes the appropriate glyphs. I’m not aware of any region in western Europe or the Americas where the first is true. This feature might be useful with Arabic or Thai:

echo %@datefmt[*,%%#c]
الخميس، 8 مارس 2001 6:22:00 ص

echo %@datefmt[*,%%#~c]
الخميس، ٨ مارس ٢٠٠١ ٦:٢٢:٠٠ ص


You can use backslash escapes to include special characters in the format string: