The FormatTime(fmt, option) command returns a string containing a formatted date and time. Both the format string fmt and the integer time displacement or equation option are optional. The default format is the ISO 8601 standard default date format, which has the form YYYY-MM-DD, where "Y" denotes a year digit, "M" denotes a digit of the month (01-12), and "D" denotes a digit of the day of the month (01-31). The default time displacement is $0$ (the current time).

The time format string is a Maple string that can contain time and date format conversion specifiers, introduced by a $''\%''$ character. This works in a manner similar to the conversion specifiers used in printf or sscanf, but the defined conversion specifiers are different. The format string is copied to the output, but conversion specifiers are replaced with their meanings with respect to the option argument, if present, or the current date and time if no option argument is supplied. A literal $''\%''$ character can be included in the format string by using $''\%\%''$.

The following table lists the known conversion specifiers and their meanings.

Integer offsets passed via the second parameter must be 32-bit integers.

All of the StringTools package commands treat strings as (null-terminated) sequences of $8$-bit (ASCII) characters.  Thus, there is no support for multibyte character encodings, such as unicode encodings.

$\mathrm{with}\left(\mathrm{StringTools}\right)\:$

$\mathrm{FormatTime}\left(\right)$

$''2024-03-01''$

$\mathrm{FormatTime}\left(''\%Y-\%m-\%d''\right)$

$''2024-03-01''$

$\mathrm{FormatTime}\left(''\%Y-\%m-\%d''\,0\right)$

$''2024-03-01''$

$\mathrm{FormatTime}\left(''\%Y-\%m-\%d''\,-60\cdot 60\cdot 24\right)$

$''2024-02-29''$

$\mathrm{FormatTime}\left(''\%Y-\%m-\%d''\,\mathrm{timestamp}=0\right)$

$''1969-12-31''$

$\mathrm{FormatTime}\left(''\%Y-\%m-\%d''\,\mathrm{timestamp}=\mathrm{iolib}\left(25\right)\right)$

$''2024-03-01''$

$\mathrm{FormatTime}\left(''\%Y-\%m-\%d''\,\mathrm{timestamp}=\mathrm{iolib}\left(25\right)-60\cdot 60\cdot 24\right)$

$''2024-02-29''$

$\mathrm{FormatTime}\left(''\%Y-\%m-\%d''\,\mathrm{offset}=60\cdot 60\cdot 24\right)$

$''2024-03-02''$

$\mathrm{seq}\left(\mathrm{printf}\left(''\%\%\%s\; -\; \%s\backslash n''\,\mathrm{ch}\,\mathrm{FormatTime}\left(\mathrm{cat}\left(''\%''\,\mathrm{ch}\right)\right)\right)\,\mathrm{ch}=''\%aAbBcCdDeHIjklmMprRSTuUVwxXyYZ''\right)$

%% - %
%a - Fri
%A - Friday
%b - Mar
%B - March
%c - Fri Mar 01 00:27:22 2024
%C - 20
%d - 01
%D - 03/01/24
%e -  1
%H - 00
%I - 12
%j - 061
%k -  0
%l - 12
%m - 03
%M - 27
%p - AM
%r - 12:27:22 AM
%R - 00:27
%S - 22
%T - 00:27:22
%u - 5
%U - 08
%V - 09
%w - 5
%x - 03/01/24
%X - 00:27:22
%y - 24
%Y - 2024
%Z - EST