Question

I work for myself, I am a self-employed coder and as a result I don’t have the luxury of code reviews or the ability to improve based upon peer programming. I am going to use this as an exercise to see if the StackOverflow community might help to review a simple method which i’ve written;

    internal static DateTime CONVERT_To_DateTime(int binDate)
    {
        //   3/10/2008 = 1822556159
        //   2/10/2008 = 1822523391
        //   1/10/2008 = 1822490623
        //   30/09/2008 = 1822392319
        //   29/09/2008 = 1822359551

        //   September 30th 2008
        //   1822392319 = 0x6c9f7fff
        //   0x6c = 108 = 2008 (based on 1900 start date)
        //   0x9 = 9 = September
        //   0xf7fff - take top 5 bits = 0x1e = 30

        //   October 1st 2008
        //   1822490623 = 0x6ca0ffff
        //   0 x6c = 108 = 2008
        //   0 xa = 10 = October
        //   0x0ffff  - take top 5 bits = 0x01 = 1

        //   OR using Binary (used by this function)
        //   a = 1822556159 (3/10/2008)
        //   1101100 1010 00011 111111111111111

        //   b = 1822523391 (2/10/2008)
        //   1101100 1010 00010 111111111111111

        //   c = 1822490623 (1/10/2008)
        //   1101100 1010 00001 111111111111111

        //   D = 1822392319 (30/09/2008)
        //   1101100 1001 11110 111111111111111

        //   Excess 111111 are probably used for time/seconds which
        //   we do not care for at the current time

        var BaseYear = 1900;

        //  Dump the long date to binary
        var strBinary = Convert.ToString(binDate);

        //  Calculate the year
        var strBYear = strBinary.Substring(0, 7);
        var iYear = Convert.ToInt32(strBYear, 2) + BaseYear;

        //  Calculate the month
        var strBMonth = strBinary.Substring(7, 4);
        var iMonth = Convert.ToInt32(strBMonth, 2);

        //  Calculate the day
        var strBDay = strBinary.Substring(11, 5);
        var iDay = Convert.ToInt32(strBDay, 2);

        // ensure that month and day have two digits
        var strDay = iDay < 10 ? "0" + iDay : iDay.ToString();
        var strMonth = iMonth < 10 ? "0" + iMonth : iMonth.ToString();

        //  Build the final date
        var convertedDate = iYear + strMonth + strDay;

        return DateTime.ParseExact(convertedDate, "yyyyMMdd", null);
    }

This is a method that takes a numeric representation of a date and converts it to a DateTime DataType. I would like the method to be reviewed to acheive the fastest possible execution time because it’s being executed within a loop.

Any comments on the method is appreciated as this will be an exercise for me. i look forward to some responses.

Answer 1

You’re doing string manipulations. This is true performance killer when used in tight loops.

    static DateTime ToDateTime(int value)
    {
        var year = (int)((value & 0xff000000) >> 24);
        var month = (value & 0xf00000) >> 20;
        var day = (value & (0xf8000)) >> 15;

        return new DateTime(1900 + year, month, day);
    }

Here’s how you do that. First, take 1822490623 and convert it to binary:

0110 1100 1010 0000 1111 1111 1111 1111

This is a mask for year:

f    f    0    0    0    0    0    0 

This is for month:

0    0    f    0    0    0    0    0

And this is for day:

0    0    0    f    8    0    0    0

“Year” value has to be shifted right by 6 * 4 bits, “month” – by 5 * 4, and “day” – by 3 * 4 + 3 bits.