The following characters are available, in order, when you specify the mask:

yyyy

Four digits that represent the year. The range is 0000 to 9999.

MM

Two digits that represent the month. The range is 01 to 12.

dd

Two digits that represent the day. The range is 01 to 31.

HH

Two digits that represent the hour. The range is 00 to 23.

mm

Two digits that represent the minute. The range is 00 to 59.

ss

Two digits that represent the second. The range is 00 to 59.

f

Zero to six digits that each represent a fraction of seconds; the first represents tenths, the second represents hundreds, and so on.

The formats
of dates, times, and timestamps are specified by a pattern of letters, each
representing a component of the date or time. These characters are case-sensitive,
and all letters from a to z and from A to Z parse
to a component of the date or time.

To display letters in the date, time, or timestamp without that text being
parsed as a component of the date or time, enclose that letter or letters
in single quotes. To display a single quote in the date, time, or timestamp,
use two single quotes.

The following table lists the letters and their values in a date, time,
or timestamp pattern.

The number of each letter used consecutively in the pattern determines
how that group of letters is interpreted and parsed. The interpretation depends
on the type of letter. Also, the interpretation depends on whether the pattern
is being used for formatting or parsing. The following list describes the
types of letters and how different numbers of those letters affect the interpretation.

Text

For formatting, if the number of letters is less than 4, the full form
is used. Otherwise, an abbreviation is used, if available. In parsing, both
forms are accepted, independent of the number of pattern letters.

Number

For formatting, the number of pattern letters represents the minimum number
of digits. Zeroes are added to shorter numbers to make them the designated
length. For parsing, the number of pattern letters is ignored unless it is
needed to separate two adjacent fields.

Year

For formatting, if the number of pattern letters is 2, the year is truncated
to 2 digits. Otherwise, it is interpreted as the Number type.For parsing,
if the number of pattern letters is not 2, the year is interpreted literally,
regardless of the number of digits. For example, the pattern MM/dd/yyyy assigned
the value 01/11/12 parses to January 11, 12 A.D. The same
pattern assigned the value 01/02/3 or 01/02/0003 parses
to January 2, 3 A.D. In the same way, the same pattern assigned the value 01/02/-3 parses
to January 2, 4 B.C.

For parsing, if the pattern is yy,
the parser determines the full year relative to the current year. The parser
assumes that the two-digit year is within 80 years before or 20 years after
the time of processing. For example, if the current year is 2004, the pattern MM/dd/yy assigned
the value 01/11/12 parses to January 11, 2012, while the
same pattern assigned the value 05/04/64 parses to May 4,
1964.

Month

If the number of pattern letters is 3 or more, the month is interpreted
as the Text type. Otherwise, it is interpreted as the Number type.

General time zone

General time zones are interpreted as the Text type if they have names.
For time zones representing a GMT offset value, the following syntax is used:GMTOffsetTimeZone
= GMT Sign Hours : Minutes

Sign

Either + or -

Hours

A one-digit or two-digit number from 0 to 23. The format is locale independent
and must be taken from the Basic Latin block of the Unicode standard.

Minutes

A two-digit number from 00 to 59. The format is locale independent and
must be taken from the Basic Latin block of the Unicode standard.

For parsing, RFC 822 time zones are also accepted.

RFC 822 time zone

For formatting, the RFC 822 4-digit time zone format is usedRFC822TimeZone
= Sign TwoDigitHours : Minutes

TwoDigitHours must
be a two-digit number from 00 to 23. The other definitions are the same as
the General time zone type.

For parsing, General time zones are also
accepted.

Century

Displayed as a Number type that shows the result of the following calculation:
full year divided by 100, with the remainder ignored.

The following table lists some examples of date and time patterns interpreted
in the U.S. locale.