string.Format Date conversion issue

Question

I am using Windows 8. My culture is "en-IN". but format for date time is MM/dd/yyyy
When trying

String.Format("{0:MM/dd/yyyy}", DateTime.Today);

gives format like 12-29-2012.

Please suggest how can I do.

Answer 1

It's not clear what the problem is. If it's just that it's using hyphens instead of slashes, that's presumably because the default date separator for your culture is a hyphen. The options are:

• Explicitly specify a different culture (e.g. the invariant culture)

  String.Format(CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, "{0:MM/dd/yyyy}", DateTime.Today);
  

• Escape the slashes:

  String.Format("{0:MM'/'dd'/'yyyy}", DateTime.Today);
  

Note that using DateTime.Today.ToString(...) would be simpler than using string.Format IMO.

Answer 2

Well, yeah - your current culture is used for a lot of format-related settings;

Here, try this:

// Change culture
Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = new System.Globalization.CultureInfo("en-IN");
Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentUICulture = new System.Globalization.CultureInfo("en-IN");

// prints 12-29-2012
Console.WriteLine(string.Format("{0:MM/dd/yyyy}", DateTime.Today));

// Invariant culture, so ignore any culture-based settings
// prints 12/29/2012
Console.WriteLine(string.Format(System.Globalization.CultureInfo.InvariantCulture, "{0:MM/dd/yyyy}", DateTime.Today));