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Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) Formats

There are currently three formats for expressing date/time in Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). All examples represent the date, July 04, 2050. The time for all three formats is expressed as hour:minutes:seconds.

Standard Format

Here is the preferred, standard format1 for the Internet. This format is defined by RFC 1123 (updated from RFC 822):

# RFC 1123 Standard GMT Format
Mon, 04 Jul 2050 07:07:07 GMT

The programming language C uses the ANSI standard format1 in its asctime():

# ANSI Standard GMT Format
Mon Jul 4 07:07:07 2050

The RFC 850 format2 is now obsolete (RFC 1036) and should not be used:

# RFC 850 Standard GMT Format [obsolete]
Monday, 04-Jul-50 07:07:07 GMT

Abbreviations

  • 1 Weekday : Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat, Sun
  • 1 Month: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
  • 2 Weekday: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday
  • 2 Month: January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December

References

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