TimeSpan String Formatting

Question

I have a Timespan that I need to output in a particular format as shown below :-

TimeSpan TimeDifference = DateTime.Now - RandomDate;

I'm formatting the TimeSpan like this :-

string result = string.Format(@"{0:hh\:mm\:ss}", TimeDifference);

The Result will look something like this :-

"00:16:45.6184635"

How do I round those seconds to 0 decimal places?

Expected Result = 00:16:46

Thanks

Answer 1

Your code works with .NET 4 but not with 3.5 since there was a breaking change on 4, TimeSpan now implements IFormattable (see below).

What you can do on 3.5 or lower is, convert the TimeSpan to DateTime and use ToString:

DateTime dtime = DateTime.MinValue.Add(TimeDifference);
string result = dtime.ToString(@"hh\:mm\:ss");

Here you can see the non-working + working version:http://ideone.com/Ak1HuD

---

Edit I think the reason why it works sometimes and sometimes not is that since .NET 4.0 TimeSpan implements IFormattable which seem to be used by String.Format.

Answer 2

Your code should work fine (after removing minor syntax errors). Consider the following example:

TimeSpan TimeDifference = DateTime.Now - DateTime.Now.AddHours(-6);
string result = string.Format(@"{0:hh\:mm\:ss}", TimeDifference);
Console.WriteLine("TimeSpan: {0}", TimeDifference.ToString());
Console.WriteLine("Formatted TimeSpan: {0}", result);

Output:

TimeSpan: 05:59:59.9990235
Formatted TimeSpan: 05:59:59