Custom Web Publishing Guide

Developing FileMaker XSLT stylesheets 69
Pattern letters are usually repeated, as their number determines the exact presentation:
1 Text: For formatting, if the number of pattern letters is four or more, the full form is used; otherwise a short
or abbreviated form is used if available. For parsing, both forms are accepted, independent of the number
of pattern letters.
1 Number: For formatting, the number of pattern letters is the minimum number of digits, and shorter
numbers are zero-padded to this amount. For parsing, the number of pattern letters is ignored unless it’s
needed to separate two adjacent fields.
1 Year: For formatting, if the number of pattern letters is two, the year is truncated to two digits; otherwise
it is interpreted as a number.
For parsing, if the number of pattern letters is more than 2, the year is interpreted literally, regardless of the
number of digits. So using the pattern “MM/dd/yyyy”, “01/11/12” parses to Jan 11, 12 A.D.
For parsing with the abbreviated year pattern (“y” or “yy”), the abbreviated year must be interpreted relative
to some century by adjusting dates to be within 80 years before and 20 years after the time the date format
instance is created. For example, using a pattern of “MM/dd/yy” and a date format instance created on Jan
1, 1997, the string “01/11/12” would be interpreted as Jan 11, 2012 while the string “05/04/64” would be
interpreted as May 4, 1964. During parsing, only strings consisting of exactly two digits will be parsed into
the default century. Any other numeric string, such as a one digit string, a three or more digit string, or a
two digit string that isn’t all digits (for example, “-1”), is interpreted literally. So “01/02/3” or “01/02/003”
are parsed, using the same pattern, as Jan 2, 3 AD. Likewise, “01/02/-3” is parsed as Jan 2, 4 BC.
1 Month: If the number of pattern letters is three or more, the month is interpreted as text; otherwise, it is
interpreted as a number.
1 General time zone: Time zones are interpreted as text if they have names. For time zones representing a
GMT offset value, the following syntax is used:
1 GMTOffsetTimeZone. GMT Sign Hours:Minutes
1 Sign. + or -
1 Hours. Digit or Digit Digit
1 Minutes. Digit Digit
1 Digit. One of the following: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Hours must be between 0 and 23, and Minutes must be between 00 and 59. The format is locale independent
and digits must be taken from the Basic Latin block of the Unicode standard.
For parsing, RFC 822 time zones are also accepted.
1 RFC 822 time zone: For formatting, the RFC 822 4-digit time zone format is used:
1 RFC822TimeZone. Sign TwoDigitHours Minutes
1 TwoDigitHours. Digit Digit
TwoDigitHours must be between 00 and 23. Other definitions are as for general time zones.
For parsing, general time zones are also accepted.
z Time zone General time zone Pacific Standard Time; PST; GMT-08:00
Z Time zone RFC 822 time zone -0800
Letter Date or Time Component Presentation Examples