Question

I’ve been using PHP for a while now – but when I need to use date() to format a time, I can never remember the hour syntax correctly. Is there any trick for remembering the rhyme and reason for using g/G/h/H ?

From the PHP manual for date() :

g   | 12-hour format of an hour without leading zeros   | 1 through 12
G   | 24-hour format of an hour without leading zeros   | 0 through 23
h   | 12-hour format of an hour with leading zeros      | 01 through 12
H   | 24-hour format of an hour with leading zeros      | 00 through 23

and in image format:

php-time.png http://img593.imageshack.us/img593/5338/phptime.png

Answer 1

I have no idea what the actual reason is, but …

h or H is obviously hours. The capital letter is bigger, so it uses a bigger number of hours (24 vs. 12).

g or G is h or H without the leading 0. g immediately precedes h in the alphabet.

You’re going to want the leading 0 more often than not (because it aligns better), so that format gets the h for hours.

If that works for you, great. If not, consider writing the table on a Post-it® Note and sticking it to your monitor.