I am writing an arcpy tool script in ArcGIS 10.0. In a fGDB feature class, I have a Date type field. I gather that the values in the Date field are stored as long integer dates, but they display in mm/dd/yyy format in the table. What I want to do is capture the integer date value as a string showing the date in mm/dd/yyyy format. How do I go about this?

There are many examples of how to convert a date/time string to a date object/value but not vice versa. I am appending features from a feature class with many fields, including a date field, into a standard-schema fc (which I can't change) that has few fields. To save a lot of the technical attributes in the input, I must dump it all into a catch-all, user-controlled text field that is defined in the target. The date data from the input is one of those pieces of data I need to save, hence the need to convert the date to a string.

There is likely a fairly easy solution I'm missing, but at the moment I am at a loss. I appreciate any help that comes my way.