Question

Is there a way to read date time correctly regardless of date format (e.g. en-AU and en-US) in C# 4.0 or whatever framework version?

Below is two different date formats (top row is Australian format, bottom row is US format):

Timestamp,Windows User,Computer,Product,Version,Id,User,Action 
5/04/2011 9:14:16 AM,terryg,KETTSAM51,powerfulSoftware,3.0,0,Garry Terry,Lock
5/1/2011 12:38:22 PM,weanern,KETTSAM51,powerfulSoftware,3.0,1,Admin,Lock

What I want is to be able to read the dates, and process them all as Australian formatted dates.

Answer 1

I don’t see a way you could do it, for example, how should this parse:

08/01/2010

That’s a valid date in both US and AU formats, so there will always be ambiguity unless you give the parser an extra hint.