Question

I was browsing Scott Hanselman’s Developer Interview question list, and ran across this question:

What is wrong with DateTime.Parse(myString)?

While I know there are inherent risks in parsing a string of unknow format or origin, are there other reasons? Is it to use DateTime.ParseExact instead? Should it be myString.ToString() first?

Answer 1

In addition the locale problem, DateTime.Parse() could also throw an exception which you would then have to catch. Use DateTime.TryParse() or DateTime.TryParseExact() instead.