Home/ Questions/Q 70293
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-10T19:42:29+00:00

A few months ago I was introduced to the new DateTimeOffset type and was

  • 0

A few months ago I was introduced to the new DateTimeOffset type and was glad DateTime‘s flaws with regard to time zones were finally taken care of.

However, I was left wondering if there were any overhead or problems that could occur from using this new type.

I work on a multi-locale web application. Does anyone know of anything that could sway me from just using it for all my date/time work? Is there a window for abuse here?

Reference: DateTimeOffset: A New DateTime Structure in .NET 3.5 by Justin Van Patten

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Sometimes you really just want to represent a ‘local’ (timezone unaware) date and time rather than an instant in time. To be honest it’s more often useful to represent just a time – e.g. ‘wake me up at 8am, regardless of timezone’ – but date and time could be useful too.

    I agree that for the vast majority of cases, DateTimeOffset is a better fit. It does strike me as odd that there isn’t a DateTimeTimeZone struct which has both the instant and its timezone though… an offset doesn’t actually give you all the information you need. (For instance, given a DateTimeOffset, you don’t know what the time will be 24 hours later, because you don’t know when DST might kick in.)

    If you want that kind of structure, I have a very crude implementation in another answer. I’m sure it could be improved very easily 🙂

    • 0