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Formatting
Changing Date Format Symbols
The
format method of the
SimpleDateFormat
class returns a
String composed of digits and symbols. For
example, in the
String "Friday, April 10, 2009,"
the symbols are "Friday" and "April." If the
symbols encapsulated in
SimpleDateFormat don't meet your
needs, you can change them with the
DateFormatSymbols. You can change symbols that represent names for months, days of the
week, and time zones, among others. The following table lists the
DateFormatSymbols methods that allow you to modify the
symbols:
DateFormatSymbol Methods
|
Setter Method
|
Example of a Symbol
the Method Modifies
|
setAmPmStrings
|
PM
|
setEras
|
AD
|
setMonths
|
December
|
setShortMonths
|
Dec
|
setShortWeekdays
|
Tue
|
setWeekdays
|
Tuesday
|
setZoneStrings
|
PST
|
The following example invokes setShortWeekdays to change
the short names of the days of the week from lowercase to uppercase
characters. The full source code for this example is in
DateFormatSymbolsDemo.
The first element in the array argument of
setShortWeekdays is a null String. Therefore
the array is one-based rather than zero-based. The
SimpleDateFormat constructor accepts the modified
DateFormatSymbols object as an argument. Here is the
source code:
Date today;
String result;
SimpleDateFormat formatter;
DateFormatSymbols symbols;
String[] defaultDays;
String[] modifiedDays;
symbols = new DateFormatSymbols(new Locale("en","US"));
defaultDays = symbols.getShortWeekdays();
for (int i = 0; i < defaultDays.length; i++) {
System.out.print(defaultDays[i] + " ");
}
System.out.println();
String[] capitalDays = {
"", "SUN", "MON", "TUE", "WED", "THU", "FRI", "SAT"};
symbols.setShortWeekdays(capitalDays);
modifiedDays = symbols.getShortWeekdays();
for (int i = 0; i < modifiedDays.length; i++) {
System.out.print(modifiedDays[i] + " ");
}
System.out.println();
System.out.println();
formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("E", symbols);
today = new Date();
result = formatter.format(today);
System.out.println(result);
The preceding code generates this output:
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
SUN MON TUE WED THU FRI SAT
WED
