1.5

A Date object. A Date can contain a date and time.
pattern
String. The custom pattern may consist of pattern letters, separating symbols and quoted text,
for example: "'at' HH:mm:ss z"; see "Date and time patterns" on the facing page. Note that the
repetition of pattern letters determines the exact presentation.
timeLong(value)
Formats a time as long string representation, for example 12:00:00 EDT AM.
value
A Date object. A Date can contain a date and time.
timeMedium(value)
Formats a time as medium string representation, for example 12:00:00 AM.
value
A Date object. A Date can contain a date and time.
timeShort(value)
Formats a time as short string representation, for example 12:00 AM.
value
A Date object. A Date can contain a date and time.
Examples
Creating a Date object from a string
When you open a data file or database in the Designer, all fields are text fields (fields of the
type string). The formatter cannot be used to format a string with a particular date format. The
solution is to store the string in a variable as a Date object, and use the formatter with that
variable.
The following sample script demonstrates this solution. It splits a string into parts and then
creates a new Date object with the parts in the correct order. To construct a Date, the parts of
the date must be put in the following order:year, month, day, and optionally hours, minutes,
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