CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#stringdatetimeformat
bale3
bale3

Reputation: 383

C# Formatting DateTime giving me wrong result

I'm trying to format a DateTime in a C# function, but I can't get it to work.

The format I'm trying to get is like this: 

"28/02/2012"

I've tried different ways to format the DateTime, for example:

string formattedDate = DateTime.Today.ToString("dd/MM/yyyy");

string formattedDate = String.Format("{0:dd/MM/yyyy}", DateTime.Today);

Both these examples are giving me this result:

"28.02.2012"

I've formatted DateTimes many times before using the two ways shown above, but I can't really see why I'm getting "." instead of "/".

Is there some configuration that has to be set up or something?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 4008

Answers (3)

Andrew
Andrew

Reputation: 7788

I did it like this:

string formattedDate = (String.Format("{0:dd.MM.yyyy}", DateTime.Today)).Replace(".", @"/");

Upvotes: 0

phoog
phoog

Reputation: 43056

The / character in a date-time format string is a placeholder for the culture-specific date separator. To specify the / character explicitly, you need to escape it: "dd\\/MM\\/yyyy" or @"dd\/MM\/yyyy"

For more information, see the MSDN page "Custom Date and Time Format Strings"

Upvotes: 6

Jon Skeet
Jon Skeet

Reputation: 1503280

phoog has given the correct reason, but I would suggest the wrong workaround. If you always want to format the date/time as if you were in a particular culture (probably the invariant culture) then you can do that:

string formattedDate = DateTime.Today.ToString("dd/MM/yyyy", 
                                               CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

I find this cleaner than forcing some parts of the format into an invariant form, while leaving others (the numbers) up to the culture. For example, consider this:

using System;
using System.Globalization;
using System.Threading;

class Test
{
    static void Main()
    {
        CultureInfo ci = new CultureInfo("ar-SA");
        Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = ci;
        string formattedDate = DateTime.Today.ToString("dd/MM/yyyy");
        Console.WriteLine(formattedDate);
    }
}

Today, that prints "06/04/1433" - which is appropriate for the Islamic calendar, but probably isn't what you expected.

Upvotes: 11

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