Question

I store some DateTime in a CSV log with:

DateTime.Now.ToString("MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss.fff")

When I try to read it I found something like:

"05/15/2012 10:09:28.650"

The problem is when I try to cast it as a DateTime again…

DateTime.Parse("05/15/2012 10:09:28.650");

Throws an Exception “Invalid DateTime” or something like that…

How can I properly re-read the DateTime?

Answer 1

You can use DateTime.ParseExact:

string format = "MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss.fff";
DateTime d = DateTime.ParseExact("05/15/2012 10:09:28.650",
                                format,
                                System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

Standard Date and Time Format Strings