Question

I am getting a String.FormatException trying to convert/parse a string when the culture is other than non-US. The odd thing is that the string was generated by applying the very same format and culture as those being used to parse it back into a string. In the code below, all of these versions will fail:

const string culture = "ja-JP";
const string format = "dd MMM yyyy"; //error in orignal post included {0:}

CultureInfo info = new CultureInfo(culture);
Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = info;
Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture(culture);

//string toParse = String.Format(info, format, DateTime.Now); //error in original post
string toParse = DateTime.Now.ToString(format);
System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(string.Format("Culture format = {0}, Date = {1}", culture, toParse));
try
{
    DateTime output = DateTime.ParseExact(toParse, format, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
    //DateTime output = DateTime.ParseExact(toParse, format, info);
    //DateTime output = DateTime.ParseExact(toParse, format, info, DateTimeStyles.None);
    //DateTime output = Convert.ToDateTime(toParse, info);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
    System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine(ex.Message);
}

The string for en-US is "25 Feb 2010".
The string for ja-JP is "25 2 2010".

Any idea how to get "25 2 2010" back into a date?

Thanks in advance.

Edit 1: I should note that the Japanese culture is hard-coded here only as an example. I really need this to work with whatever culture is set by the user. What I need is a solution where the date time format works no matter what the user’s culture. I think the single M does it.

Edit 2: M doesn’t work for English. Anyone know a format string that works for all cultures?

Answer 1

If you change:

DateTime output = DateTime.ParseExact(
    toParse, format, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

to

DateTime output = DateTime.ParseExact(toParse, "dd MMM yyyy", info);

the date is correctly parsed.

Note that in your example you are using a culture (ja-JP) to convert to string but another culture to convert from string. Another problem is that String.Format accepts a composite format string ("My string to format - {0:dd MMM yyyy}"), but DateTime.ParseExact is expecting only the date time format.