What is wrong with this TimeSpan.ParseExact line?

Question

I am receiving a FormatError exception from this call to TimeSpan.ParseExact, but the MSDN documentation that I am reading says that this format should be correct:

TimeSpan timeSpan = TimeSpan.ParseExact("172100", "HHmmss", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

Can someone please tell me why this is not working? I am doing almost exactly the same thing with a call to DateTime.ParseExact and this works fine:

DateTime datetTime = DateTime.ParseExact("090820", "yyMMdd", CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);

Answer 1

TimeSpan does not use the same formatting rules as DateTime.

You want hhmmss, not HHmmss.

You're looking at the wrong page in MSDN - you want something like:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/se73z7b9.aspx

Answer 2

With ref to this more accurate documentation: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee372287.aspx

You need to use hh for hours, not HH.