Question

Say I convert some seconds into the TimeSpan object like this:

Dim sec = 1254234568
Dim t As TimeSpan = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(sec)

How do I format the TimeSpan object into a format like the following:

>105hr 56mn 47sec

Is there a built-in function or do I need to write a custom function?

Answer 1

Well, the simplest thing to do is to format this yourself, e.g.

return string.Format("{0}hr {1}mn {2}sec",
                     (int) span.TotalHours,
                     span.Minutes,
                     span.Seconds);

In VB:

Public Shared Function FormatTimeSpan(span As TimeSpan) As String
    Return String.Format("{0}hr {1}mn {2}sec", _
                         CInt(Math.Truncate(span.TotalHours)), _
                         span.Minutes, _
                         span.Seconds)
End Function

I don’t know whether any of the TimeSpan formatting in .NET 4 would make this simpler.