CODEWITHSUNDEEP
vb.net
Sameer
Sameer

Reputation: 33

string to date conversion - .NET different behaviour

Please see the below code:

 Dim dtEstComplDate As Date
 Try
    dtEstComplDate = "08-mar-16"
 Catch ex As Exception
     MessageBox.Show(ex.Message)
 End Try

If I set my computers local format as English (united states), '08-mar-16' gets assigned to dtEstComplDate as #3/82016# Now, If I change my computers format to Italian, this assignment results in the following exception:

"Conversion from string "08-mar-16" to type 'Date' is not valid."

I tried with 08-mrz-16 with italian setting. It did not work.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 510

Answers (3)

Moumit
Moumit

Reputation: 9510

I hope below example will help you to understand .. why these happend.. when you changing region in regional setting .. same thing happening here by dot net code ...

    Dim dtEstComplDate As Date
    Try

        'Will be the country name you set using datetimesetting
        MessageBox.Show(System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.Name)

        Dim ukCulture As System.Globalization.CultureInfo
        Dim itCulture As System.Globalization.CultureInfo

        ukCulture = New Globalization.CultureInfo("en-GB")
        itCulture = New Globalization.CultureInfo("it-IT")

        Dim strDate = "08-mar-16"

        'forcing to use uk culture when converting string to date
        System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = ukCulture

        dtEstComplDate = strDate
        MessageBox.Show(dtEstComplDate)

        'forcing to use italian culture when converting string to date
        System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = itCulture
        dtEstComplDate = strDate
        MessageBox.Show(dtEstComplDate)

    Catch ex As Exception
        MessageBox.Show(ex.Message)
    End Try

Upvotes: 0

yoss
yoss

Reputation: 97

try this its more simple to convert any to date

MsgBox(CDate("01/02/16").ToString("yyyy-MM-dd"))

the cdate function will convert your text to date

Upvotes: 0

Tim Schmelter
Tim Schmelter

Reputation: 460098

The reason is that mar is the abbreviation for the month march in english not in italian.

Don't use strings to initialize dates. Instead you should change Option Strict to On. Then you'll learn a lot about .NET methods and types and how to write type safe code. If you want to initialize a Date you can use the constructor: dtEstComplDate = New Date(2016, 3, 8).

If you really have to parse a string to Date use Date.Parse/Date.TryParse or Date.ParseExact/Date.TryParseExact: 

dtEstComplDate = Date.ParseExact("08-mar-16", "dd-MMM-yy", DateTimeFormatInfo.InvariantInfo)

I'm using InvariantInfo because it's derived from the english format.

Upvotes: 5

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