Date & Time Patterns

2019-10-12

Itsycal can optionally accept a datetime pattern which it will use to show the current date and/or time next to its icon in the menu bar. Here are some examples:

Pattern	Result
`E, d-MMM H:mm`	`Fri, 13-Jan 21:54`
`EEEE h:mm a`	`Friday 9:54 PM`

The table below shows some of the most useful characters used in datetime patterns. Characters may be used multiple times. For example, if y is used for the year, yy might produce 17 whereas yyyy produces 2017. For most numerical fields, the number of characters specifies the field width. For example, if h is the hour, h might produce 5 but hh produces 05. For some characters, the count specifies whether an abbreviated or full form should be used.

	Symbol	Occurrences	Example
Year	`y`	1..n	`1996`
Month	`M`	1..2	`09`
		3	`Sept`
		4	`September`
		5	`S`
Week of Year	`w`	1..2	`27`
Week of Month	`W`	1	`3`
Day of the Month	`d`	1..2	`31`
Day of the Week	`E`	1..3	`Tues`
		4	`Tuesday`
		5	`T`
AM or PM	`a`	1	`AM`
Hour [1-12]	`h`	1..2	`11`
Hour [0-23]	`H`	1..2	`13`
Minute	`m`	1..2	`59`
Second	`s`	1..2	`59`

Two single quotes (eg. '') represents a literal single quote, either inside or outside single quotes. Text within single quotes is not interpreted in any way (eg. 'o''clock' is replaced with o'clock). Otherwise all ASCII letters from a-z and A-Z are reserved as syntax characters, and require quoting if they are to represent literal characters.

A full description of datetime patterns can be found in the Unicode Local Data Markup Language.