Ruby strftime: Month without leading zero?

Solution 1:

Some versions of strftime do allow prefixing with minus to format out leading zeros, for eg:

strftime "%-d/%-m/%y"

However this will depend on strftime on your system. So for consistency I would do something like this instead:

dt = Time.local(2010, 'Sep', 1)
printf "%d/%d/%d", dt.day, dt.month, dt.year

Solution 2:

Here's the formatting list I go off of. This is from the docs for 2.1.3. According to this you would want %-m:

Date (Year, Month, Day):
  %Y - Year with century (can be negative, 4 digits at least)
          -0001, 0000, 1995, 2009, 14292, etc.
  %C - year / 100 (rounded down such as 20 in 2009)
  %y - year % 100 (00..99)

  %m - Month of the year, zero-padded (01..12)
          %_m  blank-padded ( 1..12)
          %-m  no-padded (1..12)
  %B - The full month name (``January'')
          %^B  uppercased (``JANUARY'')
  %b - The abbreviated month name (``Jan'')
          %^b  uppercased (``JAN'')
  %h - Equivalent to %b

  %d - Day of the month, zero-padded (01..31)
          %-d  no-padded (1..31)
  %e - Day of the month, blank-padded ( 1..31)

  %j - Day of the year (001..366)

Time (Hour, Minute, Second, Subsecond):
  %H - Hour of the day, 24-hour clock, zero-padded (00..23)
  %k - Hour of the day, 24-hour clock, blank-padded ( 0..23)
  %I - Hour of the day, 12-hour clock, zero-padded (01..12)
  %l - Hour of the day, 12-hour clock, blank-padded ( 1..12)
  %P - Meridian indicator, lowercase (``am'' or ``pm'')
  %p - Meridian indicator, uppercase (``AM'' or ``PM'')

  %M - Minute of the hour (00..59)

  %S - Second of the minute (00..60)

  %L - Millisecond of the second (000..999)
       The digits under millisecond are truncated to not produce 1000.
  %N - Fractional seconds digits, default is 9 digits (nanosecond)
          %3N  millisecond (3 digits)
          %6N  microsecond (6 digits)
          %9N  nanosecond (9 digits)
          %12N picosecond (12 digits)
          %15N femtosecond (15 digits)
          %18N attosecond (18 digits)
          %21N zeptosecond (21 digits)
          %24N yoctosecond (24 digits)
       The digits under the specified length are truncated to avoid
       carry up.

Time zone:
  %z - Time zone as hour and minute offset from UTC (e.g. +0900)
          %:z - hour and minute offset from UTC with a colon (e.g. +09:00)
          %::z - hour, minute and second offset from UTC (e.g. +09:00:00)
  %Z - Abbreviated time zone name or similar information.

Weekday:
  %A - The full weekday name (``Sunday'')
          %^A  uppercased (``SUNDAY'')
  %a - The abbreviated name (``Sun'')
          %^a  uppercased (``SUN'')
  %u - Day of the week (Monday is 1, 1..7)
  %w - Day of the week (Sunday is 0, 0..6)

ISO 8601 week-based year and week number:
The first week of YYYY starts with a Monday and includes YYYY-01-04.
The days in the year before the first week are in the last week of
the previous year.
  %G - The week-based year
  %g - The last 2 digits of the week-based year (00..99)
  %V - Week number of the week-based year (01..53)

Week number:
The first week of YYYY that starts with a Sunday or Monday (according to %U
or %W). The days in the year before the first week are in week 0.
  %U - Week number of the year. The week starts with Sunday. (00..53)
  %W - Week number of the year. The week starts with Monday. (00..53)

Seconds since the Epoch:
  %s - Number of seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC.

Literal string:
  %n - Newline character (\n)
  %t - Tab character (\t)
  %% - Literal ``%'' character

Combination:
  %c - date and time (%a %b %e %T %Y)
  %D - Date (%m/%d/%y)
  %F - The ISO 8601 date format (%Y-%m-%d)
  %v - VMS date (%e-%^b-%4Y)
  %x - Same as %D
  %X - Same as %T
  %r - 12-hour time (%I:%M:%S %p)
  %R - 24-hour time (%H:%M)
  %T - 24-hour time (%H:%M:%S)

Updated to latest 2.1.3 docs on 10/24/14

Solution 3:

Docs show a number of different options for configuring number format. Adding to the %-d format, you can also use these flags in place of "-":

Flags:
  -  don't pad a numerical output.
  _  use spaces for padding.
  0  use zeros for padding.
  ^  upcase the result string.
  #  change case.
  :  use colons for %z.