System.Globalization.CultureInfo [modified]

[ONeil Tomlinson]

       string varTempStr = "20100720";
       System.Globalization.CultureInfo enUk = new System.Globalization.CultureInfo("en-GB");
       DateTime billingDate1 = System.DateTime.ParseExact(varTempStr, "yyyyMMdd", enUk);

       System.Globalization.CultureInfo enUS = new System.Globalization.CultureInfo("en-US");
       DateTime billingDate2 = System.DateTime.ParseExact(varTempStr, "yyyyMMdd", enUS);

       string x = billingDate1.ToString();
       string y = billingDate2.ToString();

Why are 'x' and 'y' coming back as the same value ("20/07/2010 00:00:00")? Why not x= "20/07/2010 00:00:00" and y = "07/20/2010 00:00:00"?

modified on Wednesday, August 11, 2010 10:02 AM

[Dewald]

Because billingDate1 and billingDate2 are just DateTime objects that contain no information on which CultureInfo should be used to output their values. What you are doing when assigning values to the objects (though ParseExact) is simply to specify how varTempStr should be interpreted. But once the DateTime objects have their values they have their values. It is when you export those values to a string that you have to be specific as to how it's supposed to be done. Try:

        string x = billingDate1.ToString(enUk.DateTimeFormat);
        string y = billingDate2.ToString(enUS.DateTimeFormat);

[Ian Shlasko]

Because you're supplying the culture to the parser... So it's using that to change "20100720" into a date. Since you specified an exact format string ("yyyyMMdd"), that culture really doesn't mean much in this case, since both cultures use the same calendar. Then, when you turn the dates back into a string (x and y), you're just using ToString(), so it's using your default culture. You need to specify a culture-specific format provider in the ToString() calls.

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