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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-12T09:32:33+00:00

Why does CDate and parseExact turn today’s date (3rd October), represented as 03/10/2012, into

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Why does CDate and parseExact turn today’s date (3rd October), represented as 03/10/2012, into 10/03/2012? I am using Windows 7, VS2012. All my settings in Control Panel are UK/GB. I have tried adding the lines

    System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = New System.Globalization.CultureInfo("en-GB", True)
    System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = New System.Globalization.CultureInfo("en-GB", True)

with no effect.

Here is my code – you will see that I have to resort to swapping the day and month of the text version in order to get the date I want

    dim txtDate As String = "03/10/2012"
    Dim strOriginalDate As String = txtDate   ' 03/10/2012
    Dim dtmdate1 As Date = CDate(txtDate)     ' #10/03/2012#
    Dim dtmdate2 As Date = DateTime.ParseExact(txtDate, "dd/MM/yyyy", Nothing) ' #10/03/2012#
    txtDate = Split(txtDate, "/")(1) & "/" & Split(txtDate, "/")(0) & "/" & Split(txtDate, "/")(2)
    Dim dtmdate3 As Date = CDate(txtDate)     ' #3/10/2012#
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I suspect that you are looking at the date values in the Locals pane of the debugger. If you actually write out the values you will find they are as required:

    Module Module1

    Sub Main()
        System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = New System.Globalization.CultureInfo("en-GB", True)
        System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = New System.Globalization.CultureInfo("en-GB", True)

        Dim txtDate As String = "03/10/2012"
        Dim strOriginalDate As String = txtDate
        Dim dtmdate1 As Date = CDate(txtDate)
        Console.WriteLine(dtmdate1.ToString("dd MMM yyyy"))

        Dim dtmdate2 As Date = DateTime.ParseExact(txtDate, "dd/MM/yyyy", Nothing) ' #10/03/2012#
        Console.WriteLine(dtmdate2.ToString("dd MMM yyyy"))
        txtDate = Split(txtDate, "/")(1) & "/" & Split(txtDate, "/")(0) & "/" & Split(txtDate, "/")(2)

        Dim dtmdate3 As Date = CDate(txtDate)
        Console.WriteLine(dtmdate3.ToString("dd MMM yyyy"))

        Console.ReadLine()

    End Sub

End Module

    The final line of output is, of course, not as desired because you have swapped the month and day.

    Tested with VS2012 RC on W7 x64 set to en-GB. You might want to test with setting VS’s locale: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/9cytz106%28v=vs.80%29.aspx

    The display of the date as a date literal is entirely consistent with how a data literal is defined, for example see the Format Requirements subsection of Date Data Type (Visual Basic)

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