Casting string to date in VB.NET

Question

I am passing a date field to an SQL database.

The field is declared as String in the VB.NET application.

I wrote a piece of code for casting to Date :

Dim dtBdate As Date
If param_strDOB <> String.Empty Then
    dtBdate = Convert.ToDateTime(param_strDOB)
End If

But the value is passed as #3/11/2011# . It has a # - sign on either side of the Date Field.

How do I fix it?

In the SQL database the stored procedure takes the input parameter as " @DOB DateTime ".

Answer 1

From MSDN :

The date and time can be bracketed with a pair of leading and trailing NUMBER SIGN characters '#'

So you should be able to convert/parse as-is.

Answer 2

Where are you seeing the # s? While looking at it in Visual Studio? If so, then it's just the debugger showing that it's a Date value. Just ignore them.

Quote :

However, the compiler treats literals enclosed within number signs (# #) as Date.