Parsing non-standard date formats with DateTime.TryParseExact

Question

Hi Im trying to parse date strings like "1012012", "1st January 2012".

1. read the Api It says to use d,%d where the date does not have a leading 0. Cant get it working for dates like "1012012"

2. trying to use "d MMM YYYY" for "1st January 2012", what do I use so 'st', 'th' works?

   using System;
   using System.IO;
   using System.Globalization;
   
   namespace test
   {
     class Script
     {
       static public void Main(string [] args)
       {
   
           //String dateString = "9022011";  // q1
           String dateString = "9th February 2011";  //q2
           System.DateTime date = DateTime.MinValue;
           string[] format = { "ddMMyyyy", "d MMM yyyy" }; // what would be the correct format strings?
   
           if (DateTime.TryParseExact(dateString,format,new CultureInfo("en-AU"),DateTimeStyles.None,out date))
                           {
               Console.Out.WriteLine(date.ToString());
           } 
                           else
                           {
               Console.Out.WriteLine("cant convert");
           }
        }
     }
   
   }
   

Answer 1

var dateString = "1st February 2011";
DateTime date;
var replaced = dateString.Substring(0,4)
                         .Replace("nd","")
                         .Replace("th","")
                         .Replace("rd","")
                         .Replace("st","")
                         + dateString.Substring(4);

DateTime.TryParseExact(replaced, "d MMMM yyyy",
                       new CultureInfo("en-us"), DateTimeStyles.AssumeLocal, 
                       out date);

should do the trick (sorry the 'th' is nasty) - you have to take some care with the st (August) - just remove it only from the first few appearances: