MACROMEDIA COLDFUSION MX 61-DEVELOPING COLDFUSION MX Develop Manual page 59

When you do this, ColdFusion stores the information as a string. If you use a date-time function,
ColdFusion stores the value as a date-time object, which is a separate simple data type. When
possible, use date-time functions such as
because these functions can prevent you from specifying the date or time in an invalid format and
they create a date-time object immediately.
Date and time formats
You can directly enter a date, time, or date and time, using standard U.S. date formats.
ColdFusion processes the two-digit-year values 0 to 29 as twenty-first century dates; it processes
the two-digit-year values 30 to 99 as twentieth century dates. Time values can include units down
to seconds. The following table lists valid date and time formats:
To specify Use these formats
Date October 30, 2003
Oct 30, 2003
Oct. 30, 2003
10/30/03
2003-10-30
10-30-2003
Time 02:34:12
2:34a
2:34am
02:34am
2am
Date and Time Any combination of valid date and time formats, such as these:
October 30, 2003 02:34:12
Oct 30, 2003 2:34a
Oct. 30, 2001 2:34am
10/30/03 02:34am
2003-10-30 2am
10-30-2003 2am
Locale-specific dates and times
ColdFusion provides several functions that let you input and output dates and times (and
numbers and currency values) in formats that are specific to the current locale. A locale identifies a
language and locality, such as English (US) or French (Swiss). Use these functions to input or
output dates and times in formats other than the U.S. standard formats. (Use the
function to specify the locale.) The following example shows how to do this:
<cfset oldlocale = SetLocale("French (Standard)")>
<cfoutput>#LSDateFormat(Now(), "ddd, dd mmmm, yyyy")#</cfoutput>
This example outputs a line like the following:
mar., 03 juin, 2003
For more information on international functions, see
Applications," on page 371
CreateDate
and CFML Reference.
and to specify dates and times,
CreateTime
Chapter 17, "Developing Globalized
SetLocale
Strings 59