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Date Masking Syntax


Note: for date masking to work properly, your raw date data must be in the following format:

YYYY-MM-dd HH:mm.ss.S

To specify the time format use a time pattern string. In this pattern, all ASCII letters are reserved as pattern letters, which are defined as the following:

     Symbol   Meaning                 Presentation        Example
     ------   -------                 ------------        -------
     G        era designator          (Text)              AD
     y        year                    (Number)            1996
     M        month in year           (Text & Number)     July & 07
     d        day in month            (Number)            10
     h        hour in am/pm (1~12)    (Number)            12
     H        hour in day (0~23)      (Number)            0
     m        minute in hour          (Number)            30
     s        second in minute        (Number)            55
     S        millisecond             (Number)            978
     E        day in week             (Text)              Tuesday
     D        day in year             (Number)            189
     F        day of week in month    (Number)            2 (2nd Wed in July)
     w        week in year            (Number)            27
     W        week in month           (Number)            2
     a        am/pm marker            (Text)              PM
     k        hour in day (1~24)      (Number)            24
     K        hour in am/pm (0~11)    (Number)            0
     z        time zone               (Text)              Pacific Standard Time
     '        escape for text         (Delimiter)
     ''       single quote            (Literal)           '
    

The count of pattern letters determine the format.

(Text): 4 or more pattern letters--use full form, < 4--use short or abbreviated form if one exists.

(Number): the minimum number of digits. Shorter numbers are zero-padded to this amount. Year is handled specially; that is, if the count of 'y' is 2, the Year will be truncated to 2 digits.

(Text & Number): 3 or over, use text, otherwise use number.

Any characters in the pattern that are not in the ranges of ['a'..'z'] and ['A'..'Z'] will be treated as quoted text. For instance, characters like ':', '.', ' ', '#' and '@' will appear in the resulting time text even they are not embraced within single quotes.

A pattern containing any invalid pattern letter will result in a thrown exception during formatting or parsing.

Examples Using the US Locale:

     Format Pattern                         Result
     --------------                         -------
     "yyyy.MM.dd G 'at' hh:mm:ss z"    ->>  1996.07.10 AD at 15:08:56 PDT
     "EEE, MMM d, ''yy"                ->>  Wed, July 10, '96
     "h:mm a"                          ->>  12:08 PM
     "hh 'o''clock' a, zzzz"           ->>  12 o'clock PM, Pacific Daylight Time
     "K:mm a, z"                       ->>  0:00 PM, PST
     "yyyyy.MMMMM.dd GGG hh:mm aaa"    ->>  1996.July.10 AD 12:08 PM
    

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