How to get a Long Date format from DateTime without a weekday

Question

I'm looking for a locale-aware way of acquiring a long date time without the weekday. Just such a beast exist?

Below is the code I use to get the long date format including the weekday:

DateTime time = ... String formattedDate = time.ToLongDateString(); 

Edit

Examples of what I would like to see:

• en-us: December 5, 2009
• fr-fr: 5 décembre 2009
• es-es: 05 de diciembre de 2009

ToLongDateString() returns the following:

• en-us: Saturday, December 5, 2009
• fr-fr: samedi 5 décembre 2009
• es-es: sábado, 05 de diciembre de 2009

Answer 1

This seemed to do the trick.

1. Enumerate all valid datetime patterns: CultureInfo.DateTimeFormat.GetAllDateTimePatterns
2. Select longest pattern (presumably this is the best match) that:
   • Is a substring of the CultureInfo.DateTimeFormat.LongDatePattern
   • Does not contain "ddd" (short day name)
   • Does not contain "dddd" (long day name)

This appears to come up with the strings I was looking for.

See code below:

class DateTest {     static private string GetDatePatternWithoutWeekday(CultureInfo cultureInfo)     {         string[] patterns = cultureInfo e.DateTimeFormat.GetAllDateTimePatterns();          string longPattern = cultureInfo.DateTimeFormat.LongDatePattern;          string acceptablePattern = String.Empty;          foreach (string pattern in patterns)         {             if (longPattern.Contains(pattern) && !pattern.Contains("ddd") && !pattern.Contains("dddd"))             {                 if (pattern.Length > acceptablePattern.Length)                 {                     acceptablePattern = pattern;                 }             }         }          if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(acceptablePattern))         {             return longPattern;         }         return acceptablePattern;     }      static private void Test(string locale)     {         DateTime dateTime = new DateTime(2009, 12, 5);          Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture  = new CultureInfo(locale);          string format = GetDatePatternWithoutWeekday(Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture);          string result = dateTime.ToString(format);          MessageBox.Show(result);                 } } 

Technically, it probably wouldn't work if a long format had the name of the day sandwiched in the middle. For that, I should choose the pattern with longest common substring instead of longest exact match.