PHP Cookbook

3.4. Printing a Date or Time in a Specified Format

Problem

You need to print out a date or time formatted in a particular way.

Solution

Use date( ) or strftime( ):

print strftime('%c');
print date('m/d/Y');
Tue Jul 30 11:31:08 2002
               07/30/2002

Discussion

Both date( ) and strftime( ) are flexible functions that can produce a formatted time string with a variety of components. The formatting characters for these functions are listed in Table 3-3. The Windows column indicates whether the formatting character is supported by strftime( ) on Windows systems.

Table 3-3. strftime( ) and date( ) format characters

Type	strftime( )	date( )	Description	Range	Windows
Hour	%H	H	Hour, numeric, 24-hour clock	00-23	Yes
Hour	%I	h	Hour, numeric, 12-hour clock	01-12	Yes
Hour	%k		Hour, numeric, 24-hour clock, leading zero as space	0-23	No
Hour	%l		Hour, numeric, 12-hour clock, leading zero as space	1-12	No
Hour	%p	A	AM or PM designation for current locale		Yes
Hour	%P	a	am/pm designation for current locale		No
Hour		G	Hour, numeric, 24-hour clock, leading zero trimmed	0-23	No
Hour		g	Hour, numeric, 12-hour clock, leading zero trimmed	0-1	No
Minute	%M	I	Minute, numeric	00-59	Yes
Second	%S	s	Second, numeric	00-61[a]	Yes
Day	%d	d	Day of the month, numeric	01-31	Yes
Day	%e		Day of the month, numeric, leading zero as space	1-31	No
Day	%j	z	Day of the year, numeric	001-366 for strftime( )