Remove leading zero form month C#

Question

I'm having trouble to remove the leading zero from a date I found this on the miscrosoft website.

DateTime date1 = new DateTime(2008, 8, 18);
Console.WriteLine(date1.ToString("(M) MMM, MMMM", 
                  CultureInfo.CreateSpecificCulture("en-US")));
// Displays (8) Aug, August

Totally doesn't work here.

This is my code:

string date = '2013-04-01'
DateTime billrunDate = Convert.ToDateTime(date);
string test = billrunDate.ToString("M");

Test is now 01 April

I just need it to be 4 in a string or int idc Thanks!

Edit if I do:

billrunDate.ToString("(M)");

I get (4), but I dont need ()

EDIT 2: Well this works

string test = billrunDate.ToString(" M ");
string testTwo = test.Trim();

Very very ugly

Answer 1

One of my most referenced MSDN pages is the Custom Date & Time Format Strings page. You can use these as part of the formatting passed in to the ToString() method. If any of them are standard formatting patterns (as "M" is) and you want to use them along, you have to preface them with '%' or have a space before or after them in the format string (so use "%M", " M", or "M " instead of "M").

Relevant section:

"M"

The month, from 1 through 12.

"MM"

The month, from 01 through 12.

"MMM"

The abbreviated name of the month.

"MMMM"

The full name of the month.

Answer 2

It's interpreting M as a standard date and time format for "month day pattern".

To interpret a single character pattern as a custom date and time pattern, just prefix it with %:

string test = billrunDate.ToString("%M");

Answer 3

You don't need to convert to string the date to retrieve the month number.
Just read the Month property of the DateTime class:

string date = "2013-04-01";
DateTime billrunDate = Convert.ToDateTime(date);
string test = billrunDate.Month.ToString();