Display format, specified as a character vector of the letters A-Z and a-z, that correspond to the Unicode^® Locale Data Markup Language (LDML) standard for dates.

Example: 'eeee, MMMM d, yyyy HH:mm:ss' displays a date and time such as Saturday, April 5, 2014 21:41:06.

The following tables show the letters you can use to construct the value for Format. You can include nonletter characters such as a hyphen, space, colon, or any non-ASCII characters to separate the fields. To include the letters A-Z and a-z as literal characters in the format, enclose them with single quotes.

Example: 'uuuu-MM-dd''T''HH:mm:ss' displays a date and time, such as 2014-04-05T09:41:06.

The examples display the formatted output for the date, Saturday, April 5, 2014 at 9:41:06.12345 PM, in New York City.

Date and Time Formats

Use these identifiers to specify the display formats of date and time fields.

Note:   If you read a two-digit year number and specify the format as y or yy, then the pivot year determines the century to which the year belongs. Use one or more u characters instead of y characters to represent the year when working with year numbers near zero. Datetime values later than 144683 years CE or before 140743 BCE display only the year numbers, regardless of the specified Format value.

Time Zone Offset Formats

Use these identifiers to specify the display format of the time zone offset. A time zone offset is the amount of time that a specific datetime is offset from UTC. This is different from a time zone, which comprises rules that determine the offsets that are used at specific times of the year. Include a time zone offset identifier in the display format for a datetime array when you want to ensure that the time components are displayed unambiguously.

Time zone, specified as one of the following character vectors:

• '', to create an "unzoned" datetime array that does not belong to a specific time zone.

• The name of a time zone region from the IANA Time Zone Database, for example, 'America/Los_Angeles'. The name of a time zone region accounts for the current and historical rules for standard and daylight offsets from UTC that are observed in a geographic region.

• An ISO 8601 character vector of the form +HH:mm or -HH:mm, for example, '+01:00', to specify a time zone that is a fixed offset from UTC.

• 'UTC', to create a datetime array in Universal Coordinated Time.

• 'UTCLeapSeconds', to create a datetime array in Universal Coordinated Time that accounts for leap seconds.

• 'local', to create a datetime array in the system time zone. When you query the TimeZone property, the IANA value is returned.

This table lists some common names of time zone regions from the IANA Time Zone Database.

You also can use the timezones function to display a list of IANA time zone names that the datetime function accepts.

Data Types: char

Year number of each value in the datetime array, specified as a scalar or a vector, matrix, or multidimensional array the same size and shape as the datetime array. Each year number is an integer value based on the ISO calendar. Years in the current era are positive and years in the previous era are zero or negative. For example, the year number of 1 BCE is 0.

If you set the Year property to a nonleap year for a datetime value that occurs on a leap day (February 29), then the Day and Month properties change to March 1.

Month number of each value in the datetime array, specified as a scalar or a vector, matrix, or multidimensional array the same size and shape as the datetime array. Each month number is an integer value from 1 to 12. If you set a value outside that range, then the Year property adjusts accordingly, and the Month property stays within the range 1 to 12. For example, month 0 corresponds to month 12 of the previous year. For historical dates, the month number is based on the proleptic Gregorian calendar.

Day-of-month number of each value in the datetime array, specified as a scalar or a vector, matrix, or multidimensional array the same size and shape as the datetime array. Each day-of-month number is an integer value from 1 to 28, 29, 30, or 31, depending on the month and year. If you set a value outside that range, then the Month and Year properties adjust accordingly, and the Day property stays within the appropriate range. For example, day 0 corresponds to the last day of the previous month. For historical dates, the day number is based on the proleptic Gregorian calendar.

Hour number of each value in the datetime array, specified as a scalar or a vector, matrix, or multidimensional array the same size and shape as the datetime array. Each hour number is an integer value from 0 to 23. If you set a value outside that range, then the Day, Month, and Year properties adjust accordingly, and the Hour property stays within the appropriate range. For example, hour -1 corresponds to hour 23 of the previous day.

The following apply to datetime arrays with a specific time zone that follows daylight saving time:

• If you specify a value for the Hour property that would create a nonexistent datetime in the hour gap when daylight saving time begins, the value of the Hour property adjusts to the next hour.

• If you specify a value for the Hour property that would create an ambiguous datetime in the hour overlap when daylight saving time ends, then the datetime adjusts to the second of the two times (in standard time) with that hour.

Minute number of each value in the datetime array, specified as a scalar or a vector, matrix, or multidimensional array the same size and shape as the datetime array. Each minute number is an integer value from 0 to 59. If you specify a value outside that range, then the Hour, Day, Month, and Year properties adjust accordingly, and the Minute property stays within the appropriate range. For example, minute -1 corresponds to minute 59 of the previous hour.

Second of each value in the datetime array, specified as a scalar or a vector, matrix, or multidimensional array the same size and shape as the datetime array. Each second value is a floating-point value ordinarily ranging from 0 to less than 60. If you set a value outside that range, then the Minute, Hour, Day, Month, and Year properties adjust accordingly, and the Second property stays within the appropriate range. For example, second -1 corresponds to second 59 of the previous minute.

A datetime array with a TimeZone value of 'UTCLeapSeconds' has seconds ranging from 0 to less than 61. The values from 60 to 61 represent datetimes that occur during a leap second.

This property is read only.

System time zone setting, specified as a character vector. This time zone setting is determined by the system on which MATLAB^® is running.

Example: America/New_York