Convert a two digit year to a four digit year

Question

This is a question of best practices. I have a utility that takes in a two digit year as a string and I need to convert it to a four digit year as a string. right now I do <

Answer 1

You can also use the DateTime.TryParse method to convert your date. It uses the current culture settings to define the pivot year (in my case it is 2029)

DateTime resultDate;
Console.WriteLine("CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.Calendar.TwoDigitYearMax : {0}", System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.Calendar.TwoDigitYearMax);
DateTime.TryParse("01/01/28", out resultDate);
Console.WriteLine("Generated date with year=28 - {0}",resultDate);
DateTime.TryParse("01/02/29",out resultDate);
Console.WriteLine("Generated date with year=29 - {0}", resultDate);
DateTime.TryParse("01/03/30", out resultDate);
Console.WriteLine("Generated date with year=30 - {0}", resultDate);

The output is:

CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.Calendar.TwoDigitYearMax : 2029

Generated date with year=28 - 01/01/2028 00:00:00

Generated date with year=29 - 01/02/2029 00:00:00

Generated date with year=30 - 01/03/1930 00:00:00

If you want to change the behavior you can create a culture with the year you want to use as pivot. This thread shows an example

DateTime.TryParse century control C#

But as martin stated, if you want to manage a time period that spans more than 100 year, there is no way to do it with only 2 digits.