In W3School's page for toDateString() function , it says when you call toDateString() it will give something like Mon Jan 12 2015. It makes me wonder which date format toDateString() conforms to?

Is it "EEE MMM dd YYYY" or "EEE MMM d YYYY"?

In W3School's page for toDateString() function , it says when you call toDateString() it will give something like Mon Jan 12 2015. It makes me wonder which date format toDateString() conforms to?

Is it "EEE MMM dd YYYY" or "EEE MMM d YYYY"?

• javascript

• Try it out in your browser's console. For me, it's the former (leading zeros) in Chrome on Windows 8.1. i.e.: (new Date(2015, 1, 9)).toDateString() => "Mon Feb 09 2015". – Cᴏʀʏ Commented Jan 12, 2015 at 1:06
• You'll get a more consistent result from toISOString(), but note that it is not present in IE through version 8. – Mark Reed Commented Jan 12, 2015 at 1:07

2 Answers 2

From the ECMAScript 5.1 spec:

15.9.5.3 Date.prototype.toDateString ( )

This function returns a String value. The contents of the String are implementation-dependent, but are intended to represent the “date” portion of the Date in the current time zone in a convenient, human-readable form.

Therefore, you can't assume any format, it's implementation-dependent.

Here is a good link to Mozilla:

https://developer.mozilla/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Date/toDateString

The format follows (when using moment.js): 'EEE MMM d YYYY'