| Credits | Overview | Plotting Styles | Commands | Terminals |
|---|
There are two groups of time format specifiers: time/date and relative time. These may be used to generate axis tic labels or to encode time in a string. See set xtics time, strftime, strptime.
The time/date formats are
| Date Format | Explanation |
|---|---|
| %a | abbreviated name of day of the week |
| %A | full name of day of the week |
| %b or %h | abbreviated name of the month |
| %B | full name of the month |
| %d | day of the month, 01–31 |
| %D | shorthand for %m/%d/%y (only output) |
| %F | shorthand for %Y-%m-%d (only output) |
| %k | hour, 0–23 (one or two digits) |
| %H | hour, 00–23 (always two digits) |
| %l | hour, 1–12 (one or two digits) |
| %I | hour, 01–12 (always two digits) |
| %j | day of the year, 1–366 |
| %m | month, 01–12 |
| %M | minute, 0–60 |
| %p | "am" or "pm" |
| %r | shorthand for %I:%M:%S %p (only output) |
| %R | shorthand for %H:%M (only output) |
| %S | second, integer 0–60 on output, (double) on input |
| %s | number of seconds since start of year 1970 |
| %T | shorthand for %H:%M:%S (only output) |
| %U | week of the year (CDC/MMWR "epi week") |
| %w | day of the week, 0–6 (Sunday = 0) |
| %W | week of the year (ISO 8601 week date) |
| %y | year, 0-99 in range 1969-2068 |
| %Y | year, 4-digit |
| %z | timezone, [+-]hh:mm |
| %Z | timezone name, ignored string |
For more information on the %W format (ISO week of year) see tm_week. The %U format (CDC/MMWR epidemiological week) is similar to %W except that it uses weeks that start on Sunday rather than Monday. Caveat: Both the %W and the %U formats were unreliable in gnuplot versions prior to 5.4.2. See unit test "week_date.dem".
The relative time formats express the length of a time interval on either side of a zero time point. The relative time formats are
| Time Format | Explanation |
|---|---|
| %tD | +/- days relative to time=0 |
| %tH | +/- hours relative to time=0 (does not wrap at 24) |
| %tM | +/- minutes relative to time=0 |
| %tS | +/- seconds associated with previous tH or tM field |
Numerical formats may be preceded by a "0" ("zero") to pad the field with leading zeroes, and preceded by a positive digit to define the minimum field width. The %S, and %t formats also accept a precision specifier so that fractional hours/minutes/seconds can be written.
| Subtopics | |
|---|---|