Question

I have come across this problem several times in which I would like to have multiple versions of the same file in the same directory. The way I have been doing it using C# is by adding a time stamp to the file name with something like this DateTime.Now.ToString().Replace('/', '-').Replace(':', '.').
Is there a better way to do this?

Answer 1

You can use DateTime.ToString Method (String)

DateTime.Now.ToString("yyyyMMddHHmmssfff")

or string.Format

string.Format("{0:yyyy-MM-dd_HH-mm-ss-fff}", DateTime.Now);

or Interpolated Strings

$"{DateTime.Now:yyyy-MM-dd_HH-mm-ss-fff}"

There are following custom format specifiers y (year), M (month), d
(day), h (hour 12), H (hour 24), m (minute), s (second), f (second
fraction), F (second fraction, trailing zeroes are trimmed), t (P.M or
A.M) and z (time zone).

With Extension Method

Usage:

string result = "myfile.txt".AppendTimeStamp();
//myfile20130604234625642.txt

Extension method

public static class MyExtensions
{
    public static string AppendTimeStamp(this string fileName)
    {
        return string.Concat(
            Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(fileName),
            DateTime.Now.ToString("yyyyMMddHHmmssfff"),
            Path.GetExtension(fileName)
            );
    }
}