How to parse a string to DateTime

Question

i have a string date in the following format

 Thu Jan  5 19:58:58 2012

I need to parse this string to System.DateTime TimeReceived variable using DateTime.Parse() method.

Any one knows how to parse this string?

Answer 1

You could use the TryParseExact method which allows you to specify a format:

var str = "Thu Jan 5 19:58:58 2012";
DateTime date;
if (DateTime.TryParseExact(str, "ddd MMM d HH:mm:ss yyyy", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, DateTimeStyles.None, out date))
{
    // the date was successfully parsed, you could use the date variable here
    Console.WriteLine("{0:HH:mm:ss dd/MMM/yy}", date);
}

Answer 2

if you look at the ParseExact function, about halfway there's

dateString = "Sun 15 Jun 2008 8:30 AM -06:00";
format = "ddd dd MMM yyyy h:mm tt zzz";

so if you'd switch those around to match what you want, you'll end up with

CultureInfo provider = CultureInfo.InvariantCulture;

// Parse date and time with custom specifier.
dateString = "Thu 5 Jan 19:58:58 2012";

format = "ddd MMM dd hh:mm:ss yyyy";
try {
   result = DateTime.ParseExact(dateString, format, provider);
   Console.WriteLine("{0} converts to {1}.", dateString, result.ToString());
}
catch (FormatException) {
   Console.WriteLine("{0} is not in the correct format.", dateString);
}

Answer 3

var reformatted = input.Substring(4, 17) + input.Substring(22);
return DateTime.Parse(reformatted);

That should work fine.