DateTime.ToString issue

Question

I try to display a DateTime with the "general date short time" format. When I use the g specifier, it gives me something like 01-08-13 10:12:00 10:12 instead of 01-05-13 10:12 .

It seems to duplicate the time and I don't know why.

Anyone?

Edit 1 Here is the code I use:

var startDate = DateTime.MinValue.ToString("g");  
if (Airspace.StartDate != null)  
    startDate = ((DateTime)Airspace.StartDate).ToString("g"); //01-08-13 00:00:00 00:00

Edit 2 The same issue occurs when I use "short date pattern":

var startDate = DateTime.MinValue.ToString("d");  
if (Airspace.StartDate != null)  
    startDate = ((DateTime)Airspace.StartDate).ToString("d"); //01-08-13 00:00:00

It doesn't make sense!

Answer 1

The "d" format specifier applies the short date pattern and "g" is a concatenation of the short date and short time patterns. So based on your results, you somehow have a short date pattern with time components in it. I can reproduce your results by setting such a short date pattern explicitly, like so:

Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture.DateTimeFormat.ShortDatePattern = "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss";
Console.WriteLine(DateTime.Today.ToString("g")); // 2008-05-11 00:00:00 00:00
Console.WriteLine(DateTime.Today.ToString("d")); // 2008-05-11 00:00:00

I think the real question is how you ended up with what looks like some very strange culture settings! I tried enumerating the set of supported cultures and looking for one whose short date format included time specifiers, like so:

foreach (var culture in CultureInfo.GetCultures(CultureTypes.AllCultures)
    .OrderByDescending(c => c.DateTimeFormat.ShortDatePattern.Length))
{
    Console.WriteLine($"{culture.Name}   {culture.DateTimeFormat.ShortDatePattern}");
}

But in several hundred cultures I came up with nothing. So, can you find anything anywhere in your code that's building up a CultureInfo object and assigning it as the current culture? If yes, maybe there's a mistake in that code somewhere.

Answer 2

Hope this can help you:

  DateTime today = DateTime.Now;
  Console.WriteLine(today.ToString("dd-MM-yy H:mm"));
  //Result: 01-08-13 04:33
  Console.ReadLine();

Other format: http://www.geekzilla.co.uk/View00FF7904-B510-468C-A2C8-F859AA20581F.htm

Answer 3

Try this

  startDate = DateTime.Now.ToString(System.Globalization.CultureInfo.
    CurrentCulture.DateTimeFormat);