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# date

date -- Format a local time/date

## Description

`string date`(string format, int [timestamp] );

Returns a string formatted according to the given format string using the given `timestamp` or the current local time if no timestamp is given.

The following characters are recognized in the format string:

- a - "am" or "pm"

- A - "AM" or "PM"

- d - day of the month, 2 digits with leading zeros; i.e. "01" to "31"

- D - day of the week, textual, 3 letters; i.e. "Fri"

- F - month, textual, long; i.e. "January"

- h - hour, 12-hour format; i.e. "01" to "12"

- H - hour, 24-hour format; i.e. "00" to "23"

- g - hour, 12-hour format without leading zeros; i.e. "1" to "12"

- G - hour, 24-hour format without leading zeros; i.e. "0" to "23"

- i - minutes; i.e. "00" to "59"

- j - day of the month without leading zeros; i.e. "1" to "31"

- l (lowercase 'L') - day of the week, textual, long; i.e. "Friday"

- L - boolean for whether it is a leap year; i.e. "0" or "1"

- m - month; i.e. "01" to "12"

- n - month without leading zeros; i.e. "1" to "12"

- M - month, textual, 3 letters; i.e. "Jan"

- s - seconds; i.e. "00" to "59"

- S - English ordinal suffix, textual, 2 characters; i.e. "th", "nd"

- t - number of days in the given month; i.e. "28" to "31"

- U - seconds since the epoch

- w - day of the week, numeric, i.e. "0" (Sunday) to "6" (Saturday)

- Y - year, 4 digits; i.e. "1999"

- y - year, 2 digits; i.e. "99"

- z - day of the year; i.e. "0" to "365"

- Z - timezone offset in seconds (i.e. "-43200" to "43200")

Unrecognized characters in the format string will be printed as-is. The "Z" format will always return "0" when using gmdate().

Example 1. Date() example

      1
      2 print (date ("l dS of F Y h:i:s A"));
      3 print ("July 1, 2000 is on a " . date ("l", mktime(0,0,0,7,1,2000)));
      4

It is possible to use date() and mktime() together to find dates in the future or the past.

Example 2. Date() and mktime() example

      1
      2 $tomorrow  = mktime (0,0,0,date("m")  ,date("d")+1,date("Y"));
      3 $lastmonth = mktime (0,0,0,date("m")-1,date("d"),  date("Y"));
      4 $nextyear  = mktime (0,0,0,date("m"),  date("d"),  date("Y")+1);
      5

To format dates in other languages, you should use the setlocale() and strftime() functions.

See also gmdate() and mktime().

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