dformat

Format for the date. Valid values are:

Value	Meaning
-1	Get effective dformat value from the DateFormat property of the current locale. This is the default behavior if you do not specify dformat.
1	MM/DD/[YY]YY (07/01/97 or 03/27/2002) — American numeric format. You must specify the correct dateseparator character (/ or .) for the current locale.
2	DD Mmm [YY]YY (01 Jul 97)
3	[YY]YY-MM-DD (1997-07-01) - ODBC format
4	DD/MM/[YY]YY (01/07/97 or 27/03/2002) — European numeric format. You must specify the correct dateseparator character (/ or .) for the current locale.
5	Mmm D, YYYY (Jul 1, 1997) or any unambiguous American date format.
6	Mmm D YYYY (Jul 1 1997) or any unambiguous American date format.
7	Mmm DD [YY]YY (Jul 01 1997) or any unambiguous American date format.
8	[YY]YYMMDD (19970701) - Numeric format, or any unambiguous American date format.
9	Mmmmm D, YYYY (July 1, 1997), or any unambiguous American date format.
13	[D]D/[M]M/YYYY (1/7/2549 or 27/11/2549) — Thai date format. Day and month are identical to European usage, except no leading zeros. The year is the Buddhist Era (BE) year, calculated by adding 543 years to the Gregorian year.
15	DD/MM/[YY]YY or YYYY-MM-DD or any unambiguous European date format with any dateseparator character, or YYYYMMDD with no date separators. The dateseparator character may be any non-alphanumeric character, including blank spaces, regardless of the dateseparator character specified in the current locale. Also accepts monthlist names and “T”.
16	YYYYc[M]Mc[D]Dc — Japanese date format. Year, month, and day numbers are the same as other date formats; leading zeros are omitted. The Japanese characters for “year”, “month”, and “day” (shown here as c) are inserted after the year, month, and day numbers. These characters are Year=$CHAR(24180), Month=$CHAR(26376), and Day=$CHAR(26085).
17	YYYYc [M]Mc [D]Dc — Japanese date format. Same as dformat 16, except that a blank space is inserted after the “year” and “month” Japanese characters.
18	[D]D Mmmmm YYYY — Tabular Hijri (Islamic) date format with full month name. Day leading zeros are omitted; year leading zeros are included. InterSystems IRIS date -445031 (07/19/0622 C.E.) = 1 Muharram 0001.
19	[D]D [M]M YYYY — Tabular Hijri (Islamic) date format with month number. Day and month leading zeros are omitted; year leading zeros are included. InterSystems IRIS date -445031 (07/19/0622 C.E.) = 1 1 0001.
20	[D]D Mmmmm YYYY — Observed Hijri (Islamic) date format with full month name. Defaults to Tabular Hijri (dformat 18). To override tabular calculation, use the class %Calendar.Hijri to add observations of new moon crescents.
21	[D]D [M]M YYYY — Observed Hijri (Islamic) date format with month number. Defaults to Tabular Hijri (dformat 19). To override tabular calculation, use the class %Calendar.Hijri to add observations of new moon crescents.

Where:

Syntax	Meaning
YYYY	YYYY is a four-digit year. [YY]YY is a two-digit year if the date falls within the active window for two-digit years; otherwise it is a four-digit years. You must supply the year value when using date formats (dformat) 1 through 4; these date formats do not supply a missing year value. Date formats 5 through 9 assume the current year if the date you specify does not include a year.
MM	Two-digit month.
D	One-digit day if the day number <10. Otherwise, two digits.
DD	Two-digit day.
Mmm	Month abbreviation extracted from the MonthAbbr property of the current locale. The default values in English are: “Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec”. Or an alternate month abbreviation (or name of any length) extracted from an optional list specified as the monthlist argument to $ZDATEH.
Mmmmm	Full name of the month as specified by the MonthName property of the current locale. The default values in English are: “January February March ... November December”.

dformat Default

If you omit dformat or set it to -1, the dformat default depends on the localeopt argument and the NLS DateFormat property:

If localeopt=1 the dformat default is ODBC format. The monthlist, yearopt, mindate and maxdate argument defaults are also set to ODBC format. This is the same as setting dformat=3.
If localeopt=0 or is unspecified, the dformat default is taken from the NLS DateFormat property. If DateFormat=3, the dformat default is ODBC format. However, DateFormat=3 does not affect the monthlist, yearopt, mindate and maxdate argument defaults, which are as specified in the current NLS locale definition.

To determine the default date properties for your locale, invoke the GetFormatItem()Opens in a new tab NLS class method:

  WRITE ##class(%SYS.NLS.Format).GetFormatItem("DateFormat"),!
  WRITE ##class(%SYS.NLS.Format).GetFormatItem("DateSeparator")

$ZDATEH will use the value of the DateSeparator property of the current locale (either / or .) as the delimiter between months, days, and the year when dformat=1 or 4.

European date format (dformat=4, DD/MM/YYYY order) is the default for many (but not all) European languages, including British English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese (which use a “/” DateSeparator character), as well as Czech (csyw), Russian (rusw), Slovak (skyw), Slovenian (svnw), and Ukrainian (ukrw) (which use a “.” DateSeparator character). For further details on default date formats for supported locales, refer to Dates.

dformat Settings

If dformat is 3 (ODBC format date), ODBC format defaults are also used for the monthlist, yearopt, mindate and maxdate argument defaults. The date separator will always be a “-”. Current locale defaults are ignored.

If dformat is 16 or 17 (Japanese date formats), the date format is independent of the locale setting. You can use Japanese-format dates on any InterSystems IRIS instance.

If dformat is 18, 19, 20, or 21 (Islamic date formats) and localeopt is unspecified, arguments default to Islamic defaults, rather than current locale defaults. The monthlist argument defaults to Arabic month names transliterated with Latin characters. The yearopt, mindate and maxdate arguments default to ODBC defaults. The date separator defaults to the Islamic default (a space), not the ODBC default or the current locale DateSeparator property value. If localeopt=0 current locale property defaults are used for these arguments. If localeopt=1 ODBC defaults are used for these arguments.

monthlist

date