A calendar date item specifies a day of the year. It is specified differently, depending on whether the month is specified numerically or literally. All these strings specify the same calendar date:
1970-09-17 # ISO 8601. 70-9-17 # This century assumed by default. 70-09-17 # Leading zeros are ignored. 9/17/72 # Common U.S. writing. 24 September 1972 24 Sept 72 # September has a special abbreviation. 24 Sep 72 # Three-letter abbreviations always allowed. Sep 24, 1972 24-sep-72 24sep72
The year can also be omitted. In this case, the last specified year is used, or the current year if none. For example:
9/17 sep 17
Here are the rules.
For numeric months, the ISO 8601 format `year-month-day' is allowed, where year is any positive number, month is a number between 01 and 12, and day is a number between 01 and 31. A leading zero must be present if a number is less than ten. If year is less than 100, then 1900 is added to it to force a date in this century. The construct `month/day/year', popular in the United States, is accepted. Also `month/day', omitting the year.
Literal months may be spelled out in full: `January', `February', `March', `April', `May', `June', `July', `August', `September', `October', `November' or `December'. Literal months may be abbreviated to their first three letters, possibly followed by an abbreviating dot. It is also permitted to write `Sept' instead of `September'.
When months are written literally, the calendar date may be given as any of the following:
day month year day month month day year day-month-year
Or, omitting the year:
month day
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