This is tightly coupled to a mm/dd/yyyy format, which we sometimes break away from. I'd suggest that, instead of replacing characters in the date itself, it replaces characters in the format.. for example if the format is "MM/DD/YYYY" (12/16/2013), that could be changed to "xx/xx/YYYY"; if the format is "MMM DD YYYY" (Dec 16 2013), that could be changed to "xxx xx YYYY". It could then use momentjs to display the date with this format.