Date and Time Formats Variable

You must specify a date and time format for the Automation Engine and object properties within the name of the variables that return a date or a time. The following table lists the variables that are affected and informs you about the formats that are supported.

Certain characters that occur in some formats must not be used in variable names. Therefore, you must specify the formats that include such characters in the variable name as shown below:

Time format: Within a variable name, you must specify time formats that include a colon character (:) with an underscore _").

For example: &$TIME_HH_MM_SS# returns the time in the format HH:MM:SS

Date format: You can use a hyphen (-), dot (.) or slash (/) character in date formats. In this case, you must also use an underscore instead of these characters in the variable name. Additionally, you must specify the character that is included in the format at the end of the format: For a point, you append the string _p, for a slash, you append _s and for a dash, you append _d.

Examples

&$PHYS_DATE_YY_MM_DD_p# supplies the date in the format YY.MM.DD
&$PHYS_DATE_YY_MM_DD_d# supplies the date in the format YY-MM-DD
&$PHYS_DATE_MM_DD_YY_s# supplies the date in the format MM/DD/YY.

Keys

Time

Variables: &$PHYS_TIME_format# , &$TIME_format#

Format used in variable	Format displayed
HHMMSS	HHMMSS
HH_MM_SS	HH:MM:SS
HHMM	HHMM
HH_MM	HH:MM
HH	HH
MM	MM

Date

Variables: &$DATE_format#, &$LDATE_format#, &$PHYS_DATE_format#

Format used in variable	Format displayed
YY	YY
YYYY	YYYY
YYMMDD	YYMMDD
YY_MM_DD_p	YY.MM.DD
YY_MM_DD_d	YY-MM-DD
YYYYMMDD	YYYYMMDD
YYYY_MM_DD_p	YYYY.MM.DD
YYYY_MM_DD_d	YYYY-MM-DD
DD	DD
DDMMYY	DDMMYY
DDMMYYYY	DDMMYYYY
DD_MM_YY_p	DD.MM.YY
DD_MM_YY_d	DD-MM-YY
DD_MM_YYYY_p	DD.MM.YYYY
DD_MM_YYYY_d	DD-MM-YYYY
LLL	LLL
MM	MM
MMDDYY	MMDDYY
MMDDYYYY	MMDDYYYY
MM_DD_YY_s	MM/DD/YY
MM_DD_YYYY_s	MM/DD/YYYY
DD_MON_YYYY_d	DD-MON-YYYY
DD_MON_RR_d	DD-MON-RR
MM_DD_YYYY_d	MM-DD-YYYY
MMDDRR	MMDDRR
DDMMRR	DDMMRR
MM_DD_RR_d	MM-DD-RR
MM_DD_RR_s	MM/DD/RR
TT	TT
WW	WW

Special formats that you must specify as shown in the variable name:

WEEK_NR: The number of the week to which the date belongs to is returned (43, for example).
WEEKDAY_NR: The number of the week day (7, for example)
YEAR_9999: The year is shown as a four-digit number (2012, for example)
YEAR_99: The year is shown in a two-digit number (12, for example)
WEEKDAY_XX: The variable returns the two-digit abbreviation of the weekday that belongs to the date.