DateTime.ToString（“ g”）fr_CA

Question

There is an aberration with date formatting using fr_CA culture.

DateTime.ToString("g") returns "YYYY-MM-DD 00:00" format because "YYYY-MM-DD" is the official Canada date format. The problem is that this format is not used at all neither by francophones and anglophones !!

So my question is: is there a way to bypass the default implementation of DateTime.ToString(string format) so that I can use "dd/mm/yyyy" instead for fr_CA which corresponds to the real usage ? and the default implementation for all other cultures.

And is it possible to do it without using another method name ?

Answer 1

You can handle this on a case by case basis. If the culture is fr-CA , replace it with a modified copy when your app starts:

if (Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.Name == "fr-CA")
{
    var frca = (CultureInfo)Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.Clone();
    frca.DateTimeFormat.ShortDatePattern = "dd/MM/yyyy";
    Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = frca;
}

And do the same for any culture you need to "customize".

Note that new threads will still start with the system-defined culture; if you're using .NET 4.5 or later, you can override that behavior using the DefaultThreadCurrentCulture property:

CultureInfo.DefaultThreadCurrentCulture = frca;