Sorry, but it seems you got me wrong. The problem is, that I'm running a multi-language site. That's why I'm only using the localized constants like DATE_LONG, DATE_MEDIUM, etc.

I'm looking for a way to get the underlying format for the current locale behind DATE_MEDIUM. The "dd.mm.yyyy" I wrote was just an example what DATE_MEDIUM may currently look like in a german locale f.i. And I didn't find a method that simply returns this string representation of the format that's currently used as DATE_MEDIUM, DATE_LONG, etc.