Where can I find more information on the format of the "Custom filename " fields?

The formatting we use is Apple's own implementation of the Unicode standard for Date formatters.


Click here to see the full specification.


Date Field Symbol Table
Field Sym. No. Example Description
era G 1..3 AD Era - Replaced with the Era string for the current date. One to three letters for the abbreviated form, four letters for the long form, five for the narrow form.
4 Anno Domini
5 A
year y 1..n 1996 Year. Normally the length specifies the padding, but for two letters it also specifies the maximum length. Example:
Year y yy yyy yyyy yyyyy
AD 1 1 01 001 0001 00001
AD 12 12 12 012 0012 00012
AD 123 123 23 123 0123 00123
AD 1234 1234 34 1234 1234 01234
AD 12345 12345 45 12345 12345 12345
Y 1..n 1997 Year (of "Week of Year"), used in ISO year-week calendar. May differ from calendar year.
u 1..n 4601 Extended year. This is a single number designating the year of this calendar system, encompassing all supra-year fields. For example, for the Julian calendar system, year numbers are positive, with an era of BCE or CE. An extended year value for the Julian calendar system assigns positive values to CE years and negative values to BCE years, with 1 BCE being year 0.
quarter Q 1..2 02 Quarter - Use one or two for the numerical quarter, three for the abbreviation, or four for the full name.
3 Q2
4 2nd quarter
q 1..2 02 Stand-Alone Quarter - Use one or two for the numerical quarter, three for the abbreviation, or four for the full name.
3 Q2
4 2nd quarter
month M 1..2 09 Month - Use one or two for the numerical month, three for the abbreviation, or four for the full name, or five for the narrow name.
3 Sept
4 September
5 S
L 1..2 09 Stand-Alone Month - Use one or two for the numerical month, three for the abbreviation, or four for the full name, or 5 for the narrow name.
3 Sept
4 September
5 S
week w 1..2 27 Week of Year.
W 1 3 Week of Month
day d 1..2 1 Date - Day of the month
D 1..3 345 Day of year
F 1 2
 		 Day of Week in Month. The example is for the 2nd Wed in July
g 1..n 2451334 Modified Julian day. This is different from the conventional Julian day number in two regards. First, it demarcates days at local zone midnight, rather than noon GMT. Second, it is a local number; that is, it depends on the local time zone. It can be thought of as a single number that encompasses all the date-related fields.
week
day		 E 1..3 Tues Day of week - Use one through three letters for the short day, or four for the full name, or five for the narrow name.
4 Tuesday
5 T
e 1..2 2 Local day of week. Same as E except adds a numeric value that will depend on the local starting day of the week, using one or two letters. For this example, Monday is the first day of the week.
3 Tues
4 Tuesday
5 T
c 1 2 Stand-Alone local day of week - Use one letter for the local numeric value (same as 'e'), three for the short day, or four for the full name, or five for the narrow name.
3 Tues
4 Tuesday
5 T
period a 1 AM AM or PM
hour h 1..2 11 Hour [1-12].
H 1..2 13 Hour [0-23].
K 1..2 0 Hour [0-11].
k 1..2 24 Hour [1-24].
minute m 1..2 59 Minute. Use one or two for zero padding.
second s 1..2 12 Second. Use one or two for zero padding.
S 1..n 3457 Fractional Second - rounds to the count of letters. (example is for 12.34567)
A 1..n 69540000 Milliseconds in day. This field behaves exactly like a composite of all time-related fields, not including the zone fields. As such, it also reflects discontinuities of those fields on DST transition days. On a day of DST onset, it will jump forward. On a day of DST cessation, it will jump backward. This reflects the fact that is must be combined with the offset field to obtain a unique local time value.
zone z 1..3 PDT Timezone - Use one to three letters for the short timezone or four for the full name. For more information, see Appendix J: Time Zone Display Names
4 Pacific Daylight Time
Z 1..3 -0800 Use one to three letters for RFC 822, four letters for GMT format.
4 GMT-08:00
v 1 PT Use one letter for short wall (generic) time, four for long wall time. For more information, see Appendix J: Time Zone Display Names
4 Pacific Time

All non-letter character represent themselves in a pattern, except for the single quote. It is used to 'escape' letters. Two single quotes in a row, whether inside or outside a quoted sequence, represent a 'real' single quote.

© 2011 Jeremy Laurenson / MapPin Software