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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-24T21:49:52+00:00

Sometimes my code is returning an a.m. or p.m. but not always. Most of

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Sometimes my code is returning an a.m. or p.m. but not always. Most of the time it just returns what I expect, which is something like: 20110815170852164

But other times it’s returning: 20100412010241 a.m.450

NSDateFormatter *dateFormatter = [[[NSDateFormatter alloc] init] autorelease];
[dateFormatter setDateFormat:@"yyyyMMddHHmmssSSS"];
NSString *dateString = [dateFormatter stringFromDate:[NSDate date]];

What could be causing this? Specific date/time country settings on users iPhones? I have this out to thousands of people, and most aren’t returning the a.m. (which is expected) but others are. WHY?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    The problem you are describing is a known bug. Check out some discussion on the problem on stackoverflow, and you can find some possible work-arounds there.

    Here’s an excerpt of huyz’s explaination of the bug:

    The problem comes from NSDateFormatter somehow “getting stuck” in the 12 or 24-hour time mode that the user has manually selected. So if a French user manually selects 12-hour mode, and the application requested NSDateFormatter to output time with the 24-hour format “HHmm”, it would actually receive time in a 12-hour format, e.g. “01:00 PM”, as if the application had instead requested “hhmm aa”. The reverse would happen if a US user manually selected 24-hour mode: outputting time with the 12-hour format “hhmm aa” would actually get you time in the 24-hour format instead, e.g. “17:00″.

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