Question

How would I change Following strings into specific customized format using php.

CHANGE
11/16/2012
11-16-2012

To
2012-16-11

Answer 1

Not sure if you are asking how to get Year-Month-Year, or how to handle either hyphens or slashes, so the funkyDateString function does both:

function funkyDateString($date) {
    return date("Y-m-Y", strtotime(preg_replace('#-#', '/', $date)));
}

echo funkyDateString("11/16/2012");
echo funkyDateString("11-16-2012");

If you need the date formatted differently, then look up the formatting options in php’s date docs