Question

I ran across a blog entry that stated DateTime.Parse is COM dependent. I have not been able to find confirming evidence for this statement.

If this is the case I would like to find documentation on this preferably sourced from Microsoft.

Source: http://blog.aasheim.org/2008/04/dont-use-datetimeparse-use.html

Answer 1

I believe you are referring to this blog, which says:

It seems that very few people know that DateTime.Parse() is COM
dependent, evil one. Moreover, even in Microsoft.NET, there is no
assurance that such string that DateTime.Parse() accepts on your
machine is acceptable under other machines. Basically DateTime.Parse()
is for newbies who don’t mind unpredictable behavior.

It appears that the author’s choice of words isn’t great; what they appear to be trying to warn the reader about is that DateTime.Parse is culture-dependent – the success/failure/result of a parse-operation will depend on the current culture. This is important for developers to note when they are trying to work with text representing date-times in a culture-sensitive/independent manner.

That said, it’s of little relevance whether or not Parse has an actual COM-dependency or not. Since it’s not directly documented, the implementation could be changed without notice by adding/removing COM dependencies.