datetime.parse failing for march in Spanish, every other month works

Question

I'm having a weird validation failure in a ASP.NET MVC 3 site with a textbox that accepts a datetime choosen via jqueryui. The site has been customized to work only with es-ES culture and works most of the time but the validation fails everytime certain month is used in that textbox. The datetime.parse method works for every month except march:

DateTime.Parse("15-feb-2012",CultureInfo.GetCultureInfo("es"), DateTimeStyles.None)
{15/02/2012 0:00:00}
    Date: {15/02/2012 0:00:00}

DateTime.Parse("15-ene-2012",CultureInfo.GetCultureInfo("es"), DateTimeStyles.None)
{15/01/2012 0:00:00}
    Date: {15/01/2012 0:00:00}

DateTime.Parse("15-abr-2012",CultureInfo.GetCultureInfo("es"), DateTimeStyles.None)
{15/04/2012 0:00:00}
    Date: {15/04/2012 0:00:00}

...

every month works except March , Marzo in Spanish ...

DateTime.Parse("15-mar-2012",CultureInfo.GetCultureInfo("es"), DateTimeStyles.None)
DateTime.Parse("15-mar-2012",CultureInfo.GetCultureInfo("es"), DateTimeStyles.None)' threw an exception of type 'System.FormatException'
    base {System.SystemException}: {"String was not recognized as a valid DateTime."}

Any idea?

Answer 1

Reproducing with NUnit:

[Test]
[ExpectedException(typeof(FormatException), ExpectedMessage = "String was not recognized as a valid DateTime.")]
public void ParsingWithAbbreviatedSpanishMarchBlowsUp()
{
   var dt = DateTime.Parse("15-mar-2012", CultureInfo.GetCultureInfo("es-ES"), DateTimeStyles.None);
}

Try setting the format and this works:

var format = "dd-MMM-yyyy";
var input= "15-mar-2012";
var dt = DateTime.ParseExact(input, format, new CultureInfo("es-ES"));
Console.WriteLine(dt);

Answer 2

I have the same issue with Italian language.

It was verified only with the .NET 4.0 version and work with 2.0.

Salvo.

Answer 3

ParseExact will do the trick but it requires to refactor a lot of code. Since the problem is caused by not being able to differentiate Marzo and Martes abbreviations. Create a specific culture and modify Martes abbreviation from Mar to Ma like this:

 Dim ci As CultureInfo = CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture("es-US")
 Dim dtfi As DateTimeFormatInfo = ci.DateTimeFormat
 dtfi.AbbreviatedDayNames = {"Dom", "Lun", "Ma", "Mie", "Jue", "Vie", "Sab"}

 CultureInfo.DefaultThreadCurrentCulture = ci
 System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = ci
 System.Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = ci