Question

I have this code:

DateTime d = DateTime.Today;
long l = d.ToBinary();
object o = (long)l;
d = new DateTime((long)o);

When I execute this code, I get an error on d = new Date..(the last line). It says the argument is out of range; that it is out of the range of max and min ticks. Which does seem probable, as using a debugger l is a huge negative number(and I didn’t think ticks could be negative).

Is C#’s object/long broken or am I just missing something here? I’ve also tried setting the DateTimeKind and that did nothing.

Also, this work is being done on a 64 bit machine.(though that shouldn’t matter due to .NET)

Answer 1

Try this instead:

DateTime d = DateTime.Today;
long l = d.ToBinary();
object o = (long)l;
d = DateTime.FromBinary((long)o);

Notice that I am using the DateTime.FromBinary method:

Deserializes a 64-bit binary value and recreates an original serialized DateTime object.

The constructor you were calling before was expecting ticks as opposed to the serialized form of DateTime.