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Lua Academy · Lesson

Formatting Dates

Build readable date strings.

Shaping the Output

You already know os.date can format time. This lesson focuses on the format string itself: the small % codes that decide exactly how a date appears.

Mastering them lets you produce dates in any style, from 2024-03-09 to Saturday, March 9.

print(os.date("%Y-%m-%d"))

Year, Month, Day

The core date codes are %Y for the 4-digit year, %m for the 2-digit month (01-12), and %d for the 2-digit day (01-31).

Anything that is not a code, like the dashes here, is printed exactly as written.

print(os.date("%Y/%m/%d"))
print(os.date("%d-%m-%Y"))

All lessons in this course

  1. os.time and os.date
  2. Formatting Dates
  3. Time Arithmetic
  4. Measuring Durations
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