Tokens that deal with dates and times have arguments that deal with the format, language, and time zone of the date and time representation. Date format arguments can be specified with a ‘!’ character or without a ‘!’ character. If the format begins with a ‘!’ character, then the format is a named format. Legal names are defined in Table 4-2.
Table 4-2 Legal Date/Time Parameters
If the format does not begin with '!', then it is interpreted as a custom date/time format conforming to the patterns recognized by the Java class java.text.SimpleDateFormat.
Language arguments can be specified by an identifier that conforms to IETF RFC 3066. The list of identifiers understood by the system can be obtained by calling the Java class java.util.Locale.getAvailableLocales() and replacing all underscores in the result with hyphens. If a language argument is omitted or blank, then the default system language is used.
Time zone arguments can be specified in any identifier recognizable by the Java class java.util.TimeZone.getTimeZone(). A list of identifiers understood by the system can be obtained by the Java class calling java.util.TimeZone.getAvailableIDs(). If a time zone argument is omitted or blank, then the default system time zone is used.