$dateformat

Usage: $dateformat(date,[format],[date order])
Category: information
Implemented: Picard 2.7

Description:

Returns the input date in the specified format, which is based on the standard Python strftime format codes. If no format is specified the date will be returned in the form ‘2020-02-15’ (year, month, day).

The “year”, “month” and “day” portions of the date must be entered as numbers, and can be separated by any non-numeric characters. The default order for the input date is “ymd” (year, month, day). This can be changed by specifying a date order.

Valid entries for date order are:

  • ymd - year, month, day (This is the default order.)

  • dmy - day, month, year

  • mdy - month, day, year

If either the date or format are invalid an empty string will be returned. If an invalid date order is specified, the default order “ymd” will be used.

Note

Any special characters such as ‘%’, ‘$’, ‘(‘, ‘)’ and ‘\’ will need to be escaped as shown in the examples below.

Warning

Platform-specific formatting codes should be avoided to help ensure the portability of scripts across the different platforms. These codes include: remove zero-padding (e.g.: %-d and %-m on Linux or macOS, and their equivalents %#d and %#m on Windows); element length specifiers (e.g.: %3Y); and hanging ‘%’ at the end of the format string.

Examples:

The following statements will return the values indicated:

$set(foo,07.21.2021)
$set(bar,mdy)
$set(format,\%Y.\%m.\%d)
$dateformat(%foo%,%format%,%bar%)     ==>  "2021.07.21"

$dateformat(2021 07 21)               ==>  "2021-07-21"
$dateformat(2021.07.21)               ==>  "2021-07-21"
$dateformat(2021-07-21)               ==>  "2021-07-21"
$dateformat(2021-7-21)                ==>  "2021-07-21"
$dateformat(2021-7-21,\%B \%d\, \%Y)  ==>  "July 21, 2021"

$dateformat(2021-07-21,,ymd)          ==>  "2021-07-21"
$dateformat(2021-07-21,,dmy)          ==>  ""
$dateformat(2021-07-21,,mdy)          ==>  ""
$dateformat(2021-July-21)             ==>  ""
$dateformat(2021)                     ==>  ""
$dateformat(2021-07)                  ==>  ""
$dateformat(,)                        ==>  ""